Class of '64
by pdhudson
Summary: AU: It is September 1963, and the world's first school for Mutants has just opened its doors. By the end of the school year, the Mutant Registration Act will be law; half the faculty and students will be gone; and everyone will have to choose between their ideals and the demands of a rapidly changing world. Welcome to the class of '64. Hope you survive the experience.
1. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

**1\. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall**

 **Jean**

I hear what people say and I hear what people think, and in my experience the two are rarely the same thing.

Take my parents. My father the professor is holding forth on natural history, one hand on the wheel, the other gesturing towards the exposed rock lining the Taconic State Parkway. He is saying: "Look, Jeannie. You see how all those different colors of rock are all slanted? That's angular unconformity. But look at the tops of those hills: the angles are cut off, smoothed down. And that's because this entire area was buried under a mile-high glacier. The mountains were much higher, much sharper back then. But as the glacier receded, all the ice and the gravel scraped the tops of the hills..."

He is thinking: _It's all my fault. She was in the womb when I was on that project. I must have exposed her to radiation. I'm the reason she's like this. Why did I take that job? There must have been thousands of physicists that would have given their right arm for the opportunity..._

The radio says: "—involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of six children at St. James Orphanage in Omaha—"

My mother is on her fourth cigarette since we left Annandale-on-Hudson. She has asked me if I remembered to pack my toothbrush, my curlers, my Librium. She is saying: "Remember, honey, we're just an hour away. If there's anything you need, or if you just feel homesick, you can always call a cab and come home. We'll pay for it."

She is thinking: _I'll miss her. But it'll be a relief to have her gone. No, that's not fair. It's not her fault. I'm a terrible mother. No, I'm not. All mothers think bad things about their children sometimes. It's just that most daughters can't read minds. It's understandable, isn't it? Not wanting to watch my own thoughts. Can she hear me now? Is she listening?_ Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror. _Oh Lord, she is. I'm so sorry, Jean. I'm a terrible mother. I'm a terrible mother. I'm a terrible—_ She puts her fourth cigarette out in the ashtray and snatches a fifth, her lighter quivering in her hand. She has to flick the wheel almost ten times before it finally makes a spark.

The radio says: "—released from the Boys' Training School, Kearney, and delivered into the custody of Dr. Charles Xavier, whose new boarding school is the first-ever founded specifically to educate Mutants—"

I slide back in my seat, lean my aching head against the window, and watch the rolling hills fly by. My parents aren't trying to hurt me. Few people are really trying to hurt anyone, but we hurt each other all the same. Luckily for me, my parents' thoughts are the only ones I've got to block. Salem Center is in the middle of nowhere, all orchards and horses, farmhouses and rich people's country estates. Blessed silence.

The radio says: "—protests from residents of Westchester County who aren't comfortable with such a concentration of Mutants in their community—"

We pass a cow pasture. On the fence, a hand-painted sign reads: "Remember the St. James Six." Glacial ice and gravel scrapes my stomach. My head pounds. I grab the bottle of aspirin from my purse and swallow two pills. I don't even need water anymore. I try to remember what Professor Xavier told me when he appeared in my room at Payne Whitney Westchester all those years ago.

I was curled up in a fetal position, my sheets twisted around me, my hands uselessly clasped over my ears. My bed and its coverings were the only things in the room because any possessions tended to rise into the air and whip around the room as soon as I got upset or had a nightmare. And even the bed was chained to the floor because otherwise I had a habit of making it float. The Thorazine did nothing to stop the voices; all it did was help my migraines a little and drain me of any energy or motivation. Nothing helped until Professor Xavier wheeled himself into my room. One minute I was bombarded by all the stray thoughts and feelings of everyone within a two-mile radius, and the next minute I wasn't. I pried open my bloodshot eyes and lifted my head from the pillows. I hadn't slept in so long that at first I thought I was hallucinating the bald man in the wheelchair at my bedside.

"Hello, Jean. My name is Charles Xavier."

"You... you made the voices stop."

"Yes."

"How?"

"I'm a Mutant. A telepath, like you. And I will tell you exactly how I did it."

He told me to picture my mind as a hallway filled with doors. The doors all led to other peoples' minds. All I had to do was picture the hallway in my mind, focus very intently on that image, then picture myself walking down that hallway and closing the doors one by one. That was the first of the little tricks he taught me.

He was a professor of psychology at Columbia University and had read about me in a case file. That got him into Payne Whitney to see me. His story was that he wanted to use experimental new techniques to treat my schizophrenia. He didn't tell anybody that I didn't have schizophrenia, that he was actually teaching me to control my telepathy. It took many visits from him, but eventually I got well enough to go home. And some house calls later, I got to the point where I could go outside and be in crowds of people without breaking down, and even go back to regular school. And now here I am, all functional and nicely dressed and speaking in clear sentences and everything. All because of closing doors. So I close my eyes to rural New York, and I close the doors in my mind. I close the door to my mother. I close the door to my father.

Blessed silence.

Except for the radio.

"—rehabilitated. The word means nothing when talking about someone who can kill people by accident. Regardless of good intentions, he will always be a threat to everyone around him—"

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," my mother murmurs.

"What wasn't a good idea?" my father asks.

"Sending Jeannie to this school, with all those dangerous Mutants."

"Mother, _I'm_ one of those dangerous Mutants," I say.

She spins around in her seat, pointing at me with two gloved fingers and one half-ash cigarette. "No. You mustn't say that. You are _not_ like those other Mutants. You are _not_ like that boy who killed those children. All you do is hear people's thoughts."

"And move objects with my mind."

"You couldn't really hurt anyone."

"Heavy objects. Sharp objects."

"You _wouldn't_ hurt anyone. You're a good girl; the thought would never even occur to you."

"He didn't do it on purpose."

"We really ought to keep the conversation civil," my father says quietly, "right before we say goodbye."

My mother turns back around in her seat, her eyes wet. "No, you're right."

"—might be kinder, in the long run, just to put a bullet between those eyes of his—"

With a violent lunge, my mother grabs the radio knobs and changes the station. Soon the only sound in the car is the Ronettes begging someone to be their baby.

We drive in silence. I notice the sign for Graymalkin Lane as my father turns onto it, and then onto a long, winding driveway. The house is masked from the road by a small wood, but once we've passed through that, the land opens up into rolling fields and the road straightens out into a wide avenue. On either side, rows of beech trees frame the red brick mansion like curtains. A sign out front reads, "Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters," the kind of sign that's brand-new but made to look old. Teen-agers and their parents pass in and out of the front doors carrying suitcases and desk lamps and boxes of books.

It suddenly occurs to me that I've never met another Mutant except for Professor Xavier. Who are these other Mutant kids anyway? What can they do? Have any of _them_ been in a mental institution? I feel certain somehow that they've all dealt with their gifts better than I have, that even here I'll be the crazy girl that everybody either makes fun of or feels sorry for.

My father pulls up and parks on the edge of the house's circular driveway. I take a deep breath and step out of the car, smoothing the folds of my skirt. I don't know if it's my nervousness or everybody else's, but instantly I crash into a wall of thoughts and crumple to the ground. There are too many doors here, and all of them are hanging wide open.

 _...wow, she's a real living doll hope my roommate's nice what if everybody hates me hardly any girls here and I can't date Wanda or Mr. Eisenhardt will throw a car at me does my back look lumpy? I hope no one notices can't let it happen again. Not here. Not ever. Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, things go better with Coca-Cola, things go better with hey, that redhead just collapsed whyisthistakingforeverwouldyoujusthurryupforcryingoutloudFINEI'lldoitmyselfWHATI'MHELPING just hate it when adults talk about you like you're not even there is that girl okay? Should I do something? Is anybody else doing anything? I probably ought to oh my stars and garters, I may have taken too many books to fit in my dorm room where's Daddy, he'll know what to do this was a mistake, I should leave, nobody's going to want to be my friend..._

Close the doors close the doors close the doors close the doors

"Hey... are you all right?"

When I open my eyes, for a second everything is still black. Then my vision slowly returns. I see white gloves on a blue skirt on gray cobblestone. I see my parents hovering around me, their terror emanating from them in waves. And there's a boy kneeling beside me, tall and slender in a green sweater and bowtie, with neatly-parted brown hair and concerned eyebrows. He's so unassuming, it takes me a moment to realize who I'm looking at. But it's impossible not to notice the eerie glow behind his red-tinted sunglasses.

Scott Summers: the St. James Killer.


	2. Angel Baby

**2\. Angel Baby**

 **Bobby**

I'm gonna do two things by the end of the school year: get a girlfriend and stop being so cold all the time. I mean it. It's September, but it's still warm out and I'm bundled up in about a million layers of sweaters and jackets and all that's not even doing anything because the cold's not coming from the outside. It's coming from inside me. And no girl wants to kiss an icicle, except maybe another Mutant girl who's also an icicle. But honestly, I don't really want to kiss an icicle either. So I'll have to _first_ stop being cold all the time and _then_ get a girlfriend, in that order, and I honestly don't much care if she's a Mutant or not. All I know is I'm a sophomore now and I've never kissed a girl and that's shameful.

So anyway, I'm moving into this school that doesn't look like any school I've ever seen, to tell you the truth. It just looks like some guy's house. A _rich_ guy's house, I mean — it's quite a big house, and real fancy, but it's still just some guy's house. I wonder how nice a house you have to have to get away with something like that, where the line is exactly. I couldn't get away with opening up a school in my little ranch house on Long Island, that's for sure.

I'm lugging a wicker laundry basket full of my sheets and blankets. I was supposed to have them neatly folded into a suitcase, but I put off packing and ran out of time, so I just balled them all up and stuffed them in the laundry basket. My parents weren't too happy about that, my mom especially.

"They'll get wrinkled!" she said. "Do you really want the other kids to see your wrinkled sheets?" If you ask me, any kid who cares about the state of some other kid's sheets ought to get a hobby. I didn't say that to my mom, though. I promised to iron them. (I'm not ironing anything, if you want to know the truth. I hate ironing. Don't tell my mom.) So anyway, I lugged this laundry basket all the way to the second floor of this house because they don't even have dormitory buildings here. I've never been to a boarding school before, but I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be more than one building. My dorm room has two twin beds, two desks, and two chests of drawers, all of them completely mismatched, like these people cleaned out a Salvation Army or something. What sort of two-bit outfit is this?

The mattresses are bare and everything's all empty, so I guess my roommate hasn't shown up yet. Better for me — I bounce a little on each bed and dump my sheets in a big pile on the one that's slightly less uncomfortable. My dad sets the box he was carrying down on the chest of drawers and starts to open it up when this brown-haired lady with a clipboard dips her head into the room, rapping on the open door with her knuckles.

"Are you settling in all right?" she asks. She's Irish or Scottish or something, I think. She's got one of those accents.

"Yes, thank you," my dad says. "My name is Bill Drake, and this is my son, Bobby."

"Moira MacTaggert. I'll be teaching science. It's a pleasure to meet you both." She shakes my dad's hand, and mine. "I'm looking forward to seeing you in my class, Bobby."

"Oh, me too, I love science," I say. That's a lie. I'm not so hot at science — or any subject, really. I'll let her find that out later. But for now, I make out like I'm some sort of science whiz who's really serious about learning and getting good grades and all because that's what you do at the start of the school year. I always intend to work hard and get good grades in the beginning. I usually make it about a month before I get bored and start throwing snowballs at the blackboard and making fart noises with my hands. But for that first month, I'm real responsible.

"It's a true honor to meet you, Dr. MacTaggert," my dad says. "You're the main reason Bobby's mother and I decided to enroll him in this school. I read about your research. I think you're doing incredible things on this Mutant issue." Well Christ, Dad, why don't you marry her? Aside from that would be polygamy and illegal and all.

"Why thank you, Mr. Drake."

"I was especially intrigued by your — what do you call it? — your project to develop a treatment for the effects of mutation. You see, my son's... condition... it causes him a great deal of discomfort — causes our _family_ a great deal of discomfort — and I wanted to know if, well... can you fix my son?"

"Fix him, sir?"

"Yes. Turn off whatever it is that's making him cold. Make him normal again."

Dr. M's looking at me and I'm looking at my shoes. They're nice shoes, real leather and everything. They're starting to frost up a little, which is something that happens when I get nervous or embarrassed. I hope that doesn't ruin the leather.

"Bear in mind, I haven't developed the treatment yet," Dr. M says. "We're not even sure yet if it's feasible. But Professor Xavier has had a great deal of success teaching young Mutants to control their gifts. I'm positive with the proper techniques that Bobby can avoid any discomfort associated with his gift, without losing it altogether."

Don't you just hate it when adults talk about you like you're not even there in the room? It really burns me up. Or frosts me up, I guess.

My dad doesn't seem too happy either. "Doctor, I'm paying a great deal of money to send Bobby to this school. We're not a wealthy family. We're making a lot of sacrifices to afford your tuition—"

"—And we appreciate that very much, and I'm sure Bobby does too," Dr. M gushes. Like hell I do.

"Like I said, the main reason I wanted Bobby to come here was so you could fix him."

Dr. M doesn't say anything for a minute, then she quietly says, "I cannot fix what isn't broken, Mr. Drake."

"But you're working on—"

"I'm working on a treatment for those whose mutations are so severe that they cannot function in society. Even as he is, it doesn't look like Bobby falls into that category."

My dad raises his voice. "Then maybe this isn't the place for him after all." Just then, two green-haired kids show up in the doorway, a boy and a girl. They sort of hang back, looking uncomfortable. The girl is staring at me like she pities me. I can't stand it. I must look like Frosty the Snowman by now, I'm so frozen up.

"Lorna! And this must be Morton?" Dr. M looks real happy for the distraction.

"Morty," the boy says quietly. He's a short little thing with warts and stringy hair and greasy, mustardy skin and eyes that are all black. He's got his shoulders hunched and his head hanging down and doesn't look at anybody. I guess maybe seeing a Mutant who's worse off than I am sort of puts things in perspective, because my dad seems to calm down a little.

"I was just showing him to his room," the girl says. She's got green hair like Morty, but she doesn't look gross like he does. She looks normal — pretty, even. Even her hair, aside from the color, is as soft and shiny as any girl's hair. She looks over Dr. M's shoulder at me. "Hi, I'm Lorna."

"Bobby."

"Why don't we let Bobby and Morty get acquainted and continue our conversation in the hall?" Dr. M says to my dad. "Thank you, Lorna. You can go now."

Lorna sort of hesitates, and smiles and waves at me all shy. "See you around, Bobby. Nice to meet you."

"You too."

"I think she likes you," Morty says.

"Yeah," I say, not really paying attention. My dad and Dr. M leave the room. I lean against the wall, trying to eavesdrop.

"Mr. Drake, please listen. I know this is hard. Having a child who is a Mutant... I know how difficult that can be. How confusing. But you must believe me, this is precisely the best place for Bobby right now," Dr. M says, all smooth and all, not even raising her voice. She may even have lowered it a little. And I thought _I_ was cold. "You've already paid for one semester. Why don't we see how it goes? I'm sure by Christmas, Bobby will have much more control over his gift. Just give it a few months, please."

Dad doesn't say anything for a minute. He's probably not too happy, but it doesn't sound like he's getting a discount, so he just has to put up with it. "All right, then. But if he's still shivering by Christmas, I'm re-enrolling him in his old school."

"If he's shivering on Christmas, it'll only be because it's December," Dr. M says. She seems to notice me listening, because she peeks her head in again and looks right at me. "What do you say, Bobby? Do you want to be here?"

I jump a little. Then I look from my dad to Dr. M and back to my dad, then around the little dorm room with its worn wooden floorboards and mismatched furniture, and strange little Morty who's pretending not to listen in. "I guess I'll give it 'til December."

"Wonderful. Well, I'll leave you to it, then. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Drake. I'll see you both at orientation." And Dr. M leaves.

"You make the bed," my dad says. "I'll go downstairs and get another box."

He leaves, and I relax a little. I wrestle with my bedsheets, trying to get them straight and all, but I keep turning them the wrong way on the bed, with the long side on the short end and everything, and I don't know which is the top sheet and which is the bottom. I mean, my mom always did this for me. And Morty's busy unpacking his own stuff, and he's not exactly the most lively conversationalist. I mean to say that he doesn't talk at all, and I'm fine with that because he's sort of a strange bird and I don't really want to talk with him, but all the same it's awkward, both of us being in the room and neither of us talking. And this bed is giving me a lot of problems. So I'm getting pretty frustrated when I see this guy out in the hall walking past the open door. He's wearing a trench coat, and at first I think he's like me — always cold — but then I notice the hump. Or humps. He has a sort of lumpy hunchback, it looks like, only poking out of the bottom of his trench coat are a couple of white feathers. They just peek out a little bit, but they're there. My heart skips a beat and my eyes dart up to the back of his head. Sure enough, he's a Negro. A pretty light-skinned one, but a Negro, certainly. I think it might really be him. I jump up from from the bed and lean into the doorway and watch him head into the room next to mine.

"Did you even _start_ making the bed?" my dad asks. I about jump out of my skin. He's got a box and a scowl, but what else is new?

"Did you just see that guy?" I whisper.

"What guy?" Dad asks at a normal volume. He's not having any of it.

"Ssshhh! The guy in the trench coat who just walked by! I think that's the Avenging Angel. I'm almost sure of it!"

"Oh for Pete's sake, Bobby, you'll meet your new classmates later. Would you just get your room set up already? Don't turn it into a pigsty as soon as you get here."

I yank the box out of my dad's hands, toss it on the floor, and start digging through it. Somewhere in here is the newspaper clipping from last spring. I find it just beneath my pencil box. It's a little crumpled, but not in too bad a shape: this grand picture of the Avenging Angel in Birmingham, flying through the air, carrying a girl out of the way of this police dog that's yanking at its leash, trying to bite her. When I saw that picture in the paper, it just killed me. I mean, it knocked me out. A guy in a mask flying around, saving people — I'd never seen anything like it. The article said nobody knew who he was, but he'd been spotted saving Negros from harassment in Atlanta, Georgia and Greensboro, North Carolina – and now Birmingham, Alabama. I guess when you have wings like that, you can really get around. So anyway, I grab the picture and a nice pen and race out the door.

"Where are you _going_? Unpack this box — don't just leave it on the floor!"

"It'll only be a second!" I call back to my dad as I run into the Avenging Angel's room. I maybe should have knocked or something because he looks at me funny when I skid into the room.

"Are you the Avenging Angel?" The words tumble out of my mouth. And I can tell right away from his face that he is. Not because I recognize him from the picture — he was wearing a mask, like I said — but because he looks like he's been caught. He's got a real movie star face too, all square-jawed with bright green eyes. It gives me a sort of sick feeling to look at him, like the floor is moving under me. Probably because I've never met a real famous person before.

"Who wants to know?" he asks. He's trying to be all cool about it, but he looks pretty scared.

"I — my name's Bobby, Bobby Drake and I'm just a big fan is all, I mean since I saw you on TV and in the newspaper and I never saw another Mutant apart from me I mean, and of course apart from the St. James Killer, but I mean a _good_ Mutant, which isn't to say I'm bad or he's bad, I only meant that, well, you were so... so _impressive_ and you were using your mutation in such a great way, to help people, and I never thought of it as being something that could help people, I mean all I can do is make ice and snow and stuff and I s'pose if I had great wings like you I might feel more positively about the whole thing but in any case I just think it was very brave what you did in Birmingham and those other places even if some people didn't like it or think you're scary, I don't think you're scary at all, I think your wings are a real sight, that is if you really _are_ the Avenging Angel because I guess if you aren't then I'd better shut up now because none of this makes any sense."

He's just staring at me now, and I feel so dumb. But then he bursts out laughing, and I think that's a good sign. He has a very nice laugh. It makes me grin a little myself, to hear it.

"Well, I'm glad _somebody_ likes me," he says.

"A lot of people like you, I'll bet. Could you... I clipped this picture out of the paper. Could you autograph it for me?" I hand him the picture and the pen. He seems amazed to see them. I guess he doesn't get a whole lot of autograph requests.

"Can I sign it 'Avenging Angel'?" he asks. "I don't want to use my real name."

"Sure, of course! You have to keep your true identity a secret, right? Or you couldn't keep saving people."

His face falls, even as he's signing the picture all nice and neat and loopy. He hands it back to me. "Well... I'm not going to be doing that anymore. Sorry, kid, but the Avenging Angel is retired."

"What? Why?"

He sighs and rubs his head. "My parents got really mad when I played hooky from boarding school to go to Birmingham. They think people will find out who I am and track me down and lynch me. I tried to tell them it's important, that people are fighting for our freedom, but they don't think any of this protesting will do any good. And they don't want me to stick my neck out. They've got my whole life mapped out." His voice drops. "I'm supposed to get straight A's and go to Morehouse and pledge Alpha Phi Alpha and marry a Spelman girl and take over my dad's insurance company one day. If I die on them, that really throws a wrench into their plans."

I nod. "My dad wants me to be an accountant."

The Avenging Angel snorts like accounting is the dumbest thing he ever heard of. I didn't think it was possible for me to like him even more than I did.

"So what _do_ you want to be if you grow up?" I ask.

He smirks a little. "I don't know. They don't pay people to fly around in a mask."

"They should."

"That's the truth."

"Don't you have a bed to make?" My dad's standing in the doorway.

"I was getting to that just now."

"Great. Go do that."

"Okay, see you around!" I start to leave, but then spin back around. "Wait, what's your real name?"

"Warren Worthington the Third."

"I'm Bobby Drake!"

"I know, you said that already."

"Right! Yes. I did. Well... goodbye. And nice to meet you. And see you around!"

"Yeah, you too. All that stuff."

" _Bobby._ "

"I'm _coming_ , Dad. Jesus Christ." I follow my dad back into my room and admire my autographed picture before slipping it into my new desk drawer. Then I start making the stupid goddamn bed.

"Orientation in the living room in five minutes!" some adult shouts from downstairs.

I leap up from the bed. "Well, we can't miss orientation now, can we?" I say to Dad as I run out of the room.

I'm pretty sure he's sighing and rubbing his temples because that's what he usually does when he's really hacked off at me. But I've got to assume, because I can't see him while I'm sliding down the banister.


	3. The Great Pretender

**3\. The Great Pretender**

 **Max**

The boy slouched in the darkest corner of the entrance hall, making his already-small frame even smaller. His skin was the color of army khaki, his hair like seaweed. His glassy black eyes flitted around the room like he was waiting for someone to give him permission to be alive.

"And what's your name, young man?" I asked.

The boy shifted his bag uncomfortably from one shoulder to another. "Morton Tolanski," he mumbled.

"Ah yes, Morton. I remember filing your application. I'm Mr. Eisenhardt, the math teacher. Do your friends call you Morty?"

Morton kept his eyes on his shoes. "I don't have any friends. The kids at school call me Toad."

I folded the paper in my hands. I knelt down on the floor in front of him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and looked him directly in his eyes. He seemed unnerved by it, although it was hard for me to tell if we were making eye contact at all. He had no whites, no irises, no pupils — or maybe they were nothing but pupils. Was it painful for him to be in the sunlight? Was that why he picked this corner to stand in? What did the world look like to him?

"Let me tell you something, Morton. No one has the right to call you such names. No one has the right to make you feel ashamed of who you are. You're with your people now. We're all Mutants here. We all know what it's like to be outsiders. If anyone here ever calls you Toad, you come to me right away. Understood?"

Morton nodded. His lips pressed together in a sort of potential smile. It was a start.

"So — Morton? Morty? Mort? What? It's your choice."

He smiled shyly. "I like Morty."

I stood up and clapped him on the back. "Morty it is, then. Let's get you to your room."

Just then, my youngest daughter burst in from the front yard. "Daddy, there's a girl outside who just collapsed! She looks like she's having a seizure or something."

"I'll take care of it, _Sternchen_. Morty, this is my daughter Lorna. Lorna, this is Morty. Can you show him to his room? He's in #4, with Robert Drake."

"Sure. Come on," Lorna said to Morty, already climbing the stairs. "The boys' wing is this way."

Morty hoisted his bags and trotted along after her. "Hey... you have green hair too!" he said.

She smiled. "We should start a club."

I started out the door and instantly recognized the young woman kneeling in the driveway.

"Looks like the telepath's here," I murmured.

 _I'll take care of this, Max,_ said a voice in my mind.

I spun around. "You know I hate it when you do that, Charles."

He wheeled past me with a sly smirk. _While I'm gone, could you help Henry over there? He has a few questions about football and I'm afraid I can't answer a single one of them._

"I could crash your wheelchair into the fountain with my mind," I told him. "Not that I would. I just want you to know that I could."

 _Of that I have no doubt, my friend._

"Mr. Eisenhardt, right?" A cheerful young man of enormous size stood behind me. He was taller than I was, and three times as muscular. He reached out a great, meaty hand for me to shake.

"You must be Henry McCoy," I said, wincing at the pain of his grip.

"Indeed, I am! But you can call me Hank. I was just talking with Professor Xavier about possibly starting a school football team. I believe it's just the thing to bring the student body together and build school spirit! And goodness knows we Mutants could use a little pick-me-up, especially these days."

"That sounds like a perfectly fine idea to me. I can't say I know anything about American football, but we can maybe find some money in the budget for equipment. You want to coach this team, yes?"

"Well, here's the thing... there are 11 students here, and that's just exactly enough for one team. Of course, every single student would have to join, girls included. And of course, with the girls involved, we would have to play touch football, and I haven't the foggiest whom we'd play against, but..."

I was about to correct him when Charles came back in, Jean and her parents trailing ashen-faced behind.

"Excuse me one moment, Hank. Is everything all right?"

"She'll be fine. We're just having Amelia take a look at her, as a precaution," Charles said out loud, most likely for the Greys' benefit. Certainly not for mine.

"Good, good. I'm glad to see you again, Jean."

She gave me a weak smile as they disappeared into the little nurse's office that Amelia Voght had set up in one of the sitting rooms. I turned back to Hank. "Sorry about that. Who told you we had 11 students?"

"Miss Adler. I was talking with her earlier, and she said you had exactly 11. That's not correct?"

Irene. _Scheisse_. "No. We have 10."

His smile faded. "Well... I suppose it was a long shot anyway."

"Maybe next year we'll have enough students."

"But I'm a senior."

"You can come back and coach, then."

"That sounds delightful!" he said, brightening. "I certainly hope I'll have that opportunity."

"I do, too." My eyes scanned the hallway behind him. There was no sign of Irene, but Renata Daucourt was giving directions at the foot of the stairs. "If you'll excuse me, Hank—"

"Oh! One more question: would you happen to have any spare shelves that I could hang on the walls? The bookshelves provided don't have quite enough space."

"I — I don't know, I'll check the attic," I said, looking over his shoulder.

"Thank you, Mr. Eisenhardt!"

I walked over to Renata. "Orientation in ten minutes!" she shouted. She had cloaked herself in white skin and strawberry blonde hair. When she turned to look at me, her eyes were blue.

"Ren. I'm disappointed in you," I said.

She cast a cool glance around the room. "I didn't want to frighten the parents."

"They know what this place is. Anyway, some of these parents could use a little frightening. Have you seen Irene around?"

"She's in the living room, setting out the cookies for orientation."

"We have cookies now?"

She nodded. "It was Wanda's idea, actually. She thought it might help make the new students feel at home."

I swelled with pride. "Hmph," I said.

"What? You've got some great kids. You should talk with them once in a while. What do you want with Irene, anyway?"

"Just to speak to her. I'll see you at orientation. _All_ of you, I hope."

With a mischievous grin, she flashed her yellow eyes – her real eyes – for just a moment before they turned blue again.

"You look better already," I said, and headed into the living room. Irene had already made herself comfortable on the couch, munching on a cookie and fanning herself with a mimeoed information packet.

"I thought those cookies were for the children," I said.

"We have more than enough; surely we can spare one for a poor, tired blind woman," she said. "Wanda made these this morning, you know. It's statistically improbable, but all of them came out perfectly."

"That's an odd use of her gift. I approve." I sat down next to her. "So. Did you tell Hank McCoy there were 11 students here?"

"Did I?" she asked with mock innocence.

"That's what he said."

"Hm. I must have miscalculated."

"You should be more careful."

"I'm always careful, Max, my dear."

I looked her up and down. Her hair was short and slicked back with men's hair oil, and she was wearing trousers. "You and Renata both should be more careful. Especially around the parents."

"Weren't you just telling Renata that some parents could use a little frightening?"

"You heard that, did you?"

"No. Renata's going to tell me about it later and I'm going to pretend to be surprised. In any case, you shouldn't worry. Sighted people are more blind than anyone. All they see are the glasses and the cane."

"And the two unmarried women in their forties living together in the guest cottage."

"You mean the poor blind woman and her selfless caretaker?"

"Ren? Selfless? Are we talking about the same Ren here?"

"So _terribly_ selfless! She's a saint for putting up with me."

"You joke, but she really is."

Irene tsk'ed and moved the cookie tray from her lap onto the end table. "Just for that, you don't get any cookies."

"Oh, we'll see about that." I reached a hand out. The metal cookie tray rose into the air and into my hand. I selected a cookie off the top and sent the tray floating back to the end table.

"You are truly shameless."

"What good is shame, anyway?" I asked, my voice muffled by a mouth full of cookie.

"No good at all, Max. No good at all."


	4. Lonely Teenager

**4\. Lonely Teenager**

 **Scott**

The alarm clock rings at precisely six o' clock.

Judy was going to be a dancer.

Stop it.

I shut off the alarm and rise from my bed. The sleep mask puts enough pressure on my eyes to keep them closed. I cross the few feet to the door, then trace the right wall with one finger as I walk down the threadbare hallway runner to the boys' washroom. Or what will soon be the boys' washroom. Starting today, I won't have it all to myself anymore. I'd better clear my towel and toilet kit out.

Billy was the youngest. He liked playing with his toy cars in the hallway.

Stop it.

The washroom is the third door on the right. My finger catches the door frame, but I knew it was coming. The finger is just a ritual at this point. It's been almost a year since I've had to rely entirely on touch and sound and smell. But I promised Miss Adler I'd keep my skills sharp. The day Mr. Eisenhardt finished my glasses and put them on me, the day I opened my eyes for the first time in two years, I remember turning to the woman who'd come to the Boys' Training School to teach me when they wouldn't. The woman who gave me a cane and taught me orientation and mobility and Braille. I saw her for the first time then, tinted red like everything else, and I asked her what she planned to do now.

"Stay here to continue tutoring you, of course," she said.

"But I don't need this anymore," I said. "I've got the glasses now."

"You might not always have those glasses. You can't get too reliant on them. You ought to know how to get along without them if you have to. And you _will_ have to."

I didn't ask her what she meant, but I didn't argue with her. I'm not the one who can see into the future, after all.

Once I've got the shower running at the right temperature, I take the sleep mask off. I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can, so tightly that by the end of the shower my cheeks and forehead will start to ache. It's the only way to be sure. I've got to be aware of it. I can't get lazy.

I always hated Steve. Maybe I meant to do it. I knew he slept in the room above mine. Does it matter what I knew? Does it matter what I meant to do? Whatever was in my head makes no difference to the dead. I'm still here and they're all gone, and none of it is just or fair and none of it means anything.

Stop it.

The soap is on the second shelf from the top, on the left. Lather. Rinse. Eyes closed. I wonder who my roommate will be? Is it really wise to give me a roommate? I had suggested to Professor Xavier that I sleep in the guest cottage out back, far away from everyone else, but he insisted that I stay in the main house with the other students. He said he trusted me.

He shouldn't.

I turn the water off, step onto the soft bath rug, reach for the towel that should be hanging on the rack just to the right, opposite the toilet.

Walt was so shy and quiet. No one ever really knew him, and now no one ever will.

Stop it.

Anyway, Miss Adler and Miss Daucourt have the guest cottage. I suppose it's only right for teachers to get priority. I wasn't looking for favoritism, just safety. My comb is on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet, underneath the tube of Brylcreem. With my eyes still squeezed shut, I part my hair, run a thin line of Brylcreem along the edge of the comb, and comb it in. I run my hand over my face and feel a few small whiskers on my upper lip and chin. I grab my razor — middle shelf, all the way on the left. Are the blades getting rusty? I run a finger along the blade and feel a little roughness. Time to replace the blade.

How hard would it be to open my throat with this?

Stop it. Who would have to clean it all up? How would Professor Xavier feel after he stuck his neck out for you? After he told the parole board you were responsible and decent and would not kill again?

On the other hand, this is the only way to guarantee that, isn't it?

Stop it.

I replace the blade and throw the old, rusty one in the garbage, and carefully, slowly shave whatever hair I've got on my face. Once that's done, I open the top drawer under the sink for my eyeglass case. I slip my glasses on and open my eyes. Everything's still dark. I turn on the light. Now everything is red. I examine myself in the mirror; I did a good job combing my hair and shaving with no sight. I'm not losing my touch after all.

I wrap one towel around my waist and another around my neck and start collecting my things from the washroom. The air is cold on my wet skin. I pity the poor guy who has to be my roommate. I hope he's not anything like the guys I knew at reform school. But the professor wouldn't enroll people like that, would he? Anyway, I know how to defend myself now. Even without my eyes. I don't want to know, but I do. I promised myself I'd never hurt anyone again, and as soon as I got to Kearney, I broke that promise. I'll probably break it again here.

Stop it.

I arrange everything on my nightstand in order of use: the alarm clock is closest to the bed, the toilet kit furthest away. The Brylcreem has a corner bent down and the toothpaste doesn't, so I don't get the two tubes mixed up. When my towels dry, I'll fold them and place them on the top shelf of my closet. Everything in its proper place, where I can find it without seeing it.

I assemble an outfit mostly from the "green" section of my wardrobe: a green sweater, green pants, and a dark green bow tie. A pale yellow button-up shirt underneath, for some variety. I've never been a fashion plate, but I hope I look good. I hope I look respectable. I hope I don't look like a murderer. I hope I don't kill anyone else. What an odd thing to hope for. As though it wasn't completely within my control. Psychopaths must have thoughts like these.

Howie wanted to join the priesthood when he got old enough. He was the only one who actually liked the mandatory mass. And he was always going on and on about God, but he was pretty okay. He wanted to start an orphanage of his own one day. Help kids like us. Who's going to help those kids now? I took that out of the world. All the good he could have done. I destroyed it in an instant.

Stop it.

I sit down on the bed and take a deep breath. Here's what's going to happen: I'm going to count to ten, and then I'm going to walk downstairs and have breakfast with the professor and everyone. I'm going to smile and be pleasant and not flinch if someone touches me and not say anything that makes people uncomfortable and not kill myself. And then the other students will come, and I will be polite to my new roommate and make friends or at least not make enemies.

Linda wanted a family with a dog to adopt her. She loved animals.

One... two... three...

* * *

I sit at the dining room table, stacks of mimeographed papers in front of me. I gather them, fold them, and staple them into packets. Neatly, deliberately, slowly. This is a distraction. Distractions are good. I've got nothing else to do this morning but watch the house fill up. At least I can make myself useful stapling information packets together. Pietro is on the other side of the table, his hands a blur, slowed only by the physical limits of the stapler. In moments, he has the whole job done, even yanking a paper out of my hand. And then he zooms off to the living room. By the time I've followed him in there, every packet but two are laid neatly on the chairs we set up for orientation, and Pietro is gone again. But in another instant, the silver-haired blur whirs by again, setting down the chairs we were just sitting in and putting the last two packets on each seat. I cross my arms at him.

"What? You were taking too long," he says. And then he's off again, and in another instant I hear his sister Wanda shouting at him from the kitchen to stop stealing cookies. And I'm standing alone in the living room, with nothing to do and nothing but a haphazard collection of chairs to keep me company. I've got to find a new distraction. I've got to get away from the front of the house, where everyone can see me as they come in.

I walk back to the professor's study and knock on his door. He's got a little brass sign on it that says "Headmaster Xavier." It's new. He's very proud of it.

 _Come on in, Scott,_ I hear him say in my mind. I open the door just a crack and poke my head in. He's sitting at his desk, wreathed in the smoke from his pipe, putting the finishing touches on his orientation speech. I probably shouldn't be bothering him.

"What can I do for you?" he asks.

"We're all done with the information packets. Or Pietro is, anyway. He finished it in about a minute. Is there anything else I can help with?"

"Hm..." the professor puts down his pen. "Well, Dr. MacTaggert could probably use a hand guiding the students to their rooms. You know the house well; you could show them where everything is."

I stiffen. "I — I don't think that's such a good idea."

"You'll have to meet them eventually."

"I know. But... I shouldn't be the first person anyone sees. For the sake of the school's reputation."

He's looking at me in that knowing way he has. It makes me uncomfortable. He isn't reading my mind, but he doesn't have to.

"Why don't you go outside?" he says. "It's a beautiful morning. You could sit under a tree and read. Try to relax."

"That doesn't sound very helpful."

"On the contrary, I think it would help a great deal."

"Well all right, Professor. Good luck with your speech."

"Thank you, Scott. I'll see you at orientation."

I turn to leave.

"Oh, and Scott?"

"Yes, Professor?"

"You're... I'm your legal guardian now. You don't have to keep calling me 'Professor.' You can call me... something else."

"Like what?" I fiddle with the doorknob.

"Anything you want. Whatever you feel comfortable with."

"I'll think about it, Professor."

He's looking at me like that again. "All right. Go relax."

"I'll try."

I close the door and head up to my room through the narrow servants' staircase by the kitchen. I'm not avoiding anyone, I just like that staircase. It feels like a secret passage or something. Okay, maybe I am avoiding people. So what? I _should_ avoid people. I'm a murderer. The closer people get to me, the more danger they're in.

Stop it.

I grab my Braille copy of _The Red Badge of Courage_. It's slower going than reading it in English, but I might as well keep my promise to Miss Adler if I'm not doing anything else productive. I carry the book downstairs and head outside to the western side of the house, where all the shade is right now. It'll be a hot one today. I sit myself down on a soft patch of moss between the exposed roots of a grand old oak tree and find my place in the book. I run my fingers across the page. I can see people pulling up and coming into the house from here, but hopefully they don't notice me. So many people, living so close to me. What if it happens again? I can't let it happen again. Not here. Not ever.

A flash of movement catches my eye. A girl in the driveway falls to her knees, clutching her head. Without thinking, without hesitating, I drop my book and run over and kneel down next to her on the cobblestones.

"Hey... are you all right?"

She looks up at me then. She is terrifyingly beautiful. I shouldn't have done this. Her parents are hovering around. They were already worried about their daughter, and now there's a murderer next to her. I'm only making things worse; I should leave.

"I'm fine. I'll be fine," she says. "I just... I only need some aspirin." With shaky hands, she snaps open her purse and takes out a pill bottle.

"Go get Dr. Xavier," her mother says to me.

"No!" the girl shouts. "Don't bother him. I'm fine." She haltingly rises to her feet. I offer her my arm, but she waves me off. "It's nothing. I'm Jean, by the way."

"My name is Scott."

"Yeah, I... I know."

My heart sinks. Of course she does.

"Jean? I thought I felt a psychic disturbance." Professor Xavier is in the doorway. He wheels over.

"Hello, Professor. Really, I'm fine," Jean says again.

"She hasn't collapsed like this since that day at the Dutchess County Fair," her mother says. "She's been doing so well, really. What happened?"

"Starting at a new school can be stressful, and stress can certainly make it difficult to control one's telepathic abilities – particularly abilities as powerful as Jean's." He trains his eyes on Jean. "My offer still stands."

"No," she says firmly. "I don't want any psychic blocks. I can do this. I can keep it under control. This was a fluke."

"It wouldn't be permanent," the professor says. "Just until you're older and have more experience -"

"No. I'll handle it. That's what I'm here for, isn't it? To learn how to handle it?"

"Indeed it is."

"Okay, then. Let's just... let's just forget this ever happened. Please. Where is my room?"

"If it's all right with you, Jean, I would like to take you to Nurse Voght's office," the professor says. "That was quite a fall you took."

"I didn't even scrape my knees, really."

"It's not your knees I'm worried about. Come along, it won't take a moment. You too, Mr. and Mrs. Grey."

Jean looks at me apologetically. "I'll see you around, I guess."

I nod. I ought to stay away from her. For her own safety.

To my horror, she hears me. _I'm not afraid of you,_ she thinks.

 _You should be._

 _Well, I'm not. Sorry._ She shrugs, and spins around, and follows Professor Xavier into the house.

* * *

"Orientation in the living room in five minutes! ... _Bobby!_ No sliding on the banister!"

I take my time, lingering around the kitchen. I plan to sneak in at the last minute. Wanda's got the same idea, I guess, because she's hiding in here with me, stirring the punch for a lot longer than it really ought to be stirred.

"Shame we won't have the house to ourselves anymore," she says.

"Yeah. I'm not looking forward to having a roommate."

"You know who it is though, don't you?"

"No, who?"

"The Avenging Angel."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. I saw him moving his stuff in earlier. Xavier put the two celebrities in together." She winks. "You can compete over who gets the most death threats."

"That's no contest. I'll always win." I smile wryly. "What about you? Are you rooming with your sister now? Or, uh, that new girl Jean?"

"I don't have to room with anybody! That's the good thing about having so few female students. I get my room all to myself."

"Lucky you."

Pietro ducks his head in. "Are you two coming or not? It's starting soon."

"All right already, hold your horses." Wanda wraps one arm around the punch bowl and tucks a tower of plastic cups under her chin. "You coming, Scott?"

"I guess I've got to." I follow Wanda into the living room, keep close to the wall and find a seat way in the back — one of the kitchen chairs, wooden and uncomfortable. Despite my best efforts to remain invisible, everybody seems to turn around and look at me at least once. I look straight ahead at the fireplace where the teachers are gathering, pretending not to notice their stares. Jean looks back at me from her seat on the loveseat towards the front. I let my eyes flicker over to her for just a moment.

"Just look at that redhead," a guy in front of me whispers to the guy sitting next to him. "All of a sudden, I'm in no hurry to graduate from this place."

"Don't even think about it. She's mine," the other guy says.

"Oh yeah? What gives you the right to her?"

"Watch this."

Suddenly, a red rose appears in the air in front of Jean. She picks it up and looks around. The second guy smiles and waves at her.

"How in the hell did you do that?"

"It isn't real. It's a psychic projection. But she still sees it, feels it, smells it. We're both telepaths. See, I know what makes her tick. That's why she's mine."

My stomach drops. Wanda hands me a cup of punch, and I gulp it down, hoping it will quell my nausea. I keep my eyes straight ahead. Miss Daucourt leads Miss Adler by the arm to the front of the room, then a shimmer of scales sweeps across her skin, revealing her true form: blue skin, dark red hair, yellow eyes. A few parents gasp. Mr. Eisenhardt grins.

Professor Xavier wheels himself in front of the fireplace, and orientation officially begins.

"Good morning, and thank you all for joining us," the professor says. "As you probably already know, my name is Dr. Charles Xavier. For the next year — for some of you the next few years — I will be your headmaster and social studies teacher. I look forward to getting to know you all, and I hope you will to come to me with any problems or concerns you may have.

"There are many out there who feel that this school should not exist. That we Mutants should not exist. We are here today to prove them wrong. We are each blessed with remarkable gifts like no human being has ever had before. Telepathy. Flight. Strength. Speed. We can use these gifts to hurt, as many fear, or we can use them to help. We come together now to learn how to do just that: to control our gifts, and use them for the benefit of all mankind, and in doing so, show mankind that they have nothing to fear from us.

"We are each of us pioneers: children of the atom, products of a new world, a sign of things to come. The Mutant stands now at a crossroads in history, a history which I hope will someday include this very school, and a history which I believe will include each and every one of you.

"Welcome to the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters."


	5. All My Sorrows

**5\. All My Sorrows**

 **Warren**

I've been here maybe a week and I already don't like it. The Xavier School is quite different from Palmer Memorial Institute. They don't have uniforms, for one. It's so much less formal in general. I iron my clothes as sharp as I can and make my bed with hospital corners and sit up straight and nobody notices or cares. There are so few students that everybody, from freshmen to seniors, take the same classes and then the teachers give us each individual work that we mostly choose ourselves. The whole operation is a hop, skip, and a jump away from one of those oddball progressive schools where you call your teachers by their first names.

And of course, I'm the only Negro. Not that anybody's said or done anything racist, at least not in my presence. My roommate doesn't like to sleep in the same room as me. I hear him sneaking out in the night. I haven't confronted him about it and he hasn't brought it up because he never brings anything up. Scott Summers keeps to himself. I don't know if he's uncomfortable sharing a room with a Negro or if that's just how he is. Maybe I'll never know. It's just a tiny little doubt in the back of my mind that won't go away. He's polite and distant like the rest of them. They all tiptoe around me, so afraid to say anything offensive that they mostly don't say anything at all. Except for Bobby, who follows me around like a puppy dog.

Sometimes I wish people would just come out and say something, even if it's something terrible. I know why they don't, though. I haven't said much, either. With only nine other kids here, I can't afford to make an enemy. There's no place to hide from anyone you don't like. It all feels so confined.

Oh, and I'm the only one who can fly, too. It's all so ridiculous. Supposedly, I'm here to master my gift, but I already know how to fly and none of the teachers can tell me anything else about it. I know what I'm really here for: to keep a low profile, to stay out of the way while history happens without me. So I keep my wings bound even though it hurts, and I keep my head down, and I study, and I eat lunch with Bobby who thankfully does most of the talking.

They have different slang here too, northern white folks do. I hear Bobby say "Yaybo!" a lot when he's happy, but when I say it to try to fit in, everybody looks at me strangely. I'm already sick of the silence and isolation, and I've only been here a week and have two whole years to go.

So that's the mindset I'm in when I hear that some son of a bitch blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, on a Sunday no less. Four little girls were killed. I see it in the _Poughkeepsie Journal_ Monday morning, but I don't want to read that story in front of all these white people. I don't want to hear their stilted condolences. I don't want to have to reassure them that they're good people for feeling bad about the deaths of little girls.

So I grab that section of the paper and I go up to my room. Scott's not there, of course — God knows where that kid goes half the time — so I take off my shirt and harness. My wings feel stiff and sore, some of the feathers bent from spending so much time underneath the tight straps. It feels good to stretch them. I fold the paper into my trouser pocket, open the window, jump onto the sill, and take off.

It's early and the air's still crisp. It feels like a summer morning on Martha's Vineyard, but without the sea salt smell. They tell me that up here, the leaves change color like fireworks this time of year, an explosion of reds and oranges. But I haven't seen much change yet and I'm starting to think I never will.

For a while I just fly around, enjoying the thermals lifting me up and the breeze in my feathers. I don't even care who sees me — and who's going to see me, anyway? A couple of fishermen on the Titicus Reservoir? That guy with the horse farm two miles away? This feels too good for me to concern myself about what they would think.

I find a tall pine tree with sturdy high branches and settle in there, way high up. I lean back against the rough bark and read the article, and cry by myself.

"So that's where you are."

Frantically, I wipe the tears from my cheeks and look down. Two glowing red eyes are staring up at me through a pair of specially-designed Wayfarers. Man, you can't get anything past this cat.

"Everybody's looking for you," Scott calls up. "You're missing breakfast. Bobby's worried sick."

I tuck the paper back in my pocket and fly down. "Sorry. I didn't mean to worry anybody. I just wanted to be alone for a while."

He nods, looking at the paper. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are. It's okay. It's not like I knew them personally or anything." I don't know why I'm being so prickly. Maybe it's the assumption that I'd necessarily feel sadder than anybody else here. I do care more than anybody else here. But I don't want them to assume that. We're walking back to the house now, which is a handy excuse to not look Scott in the eye.

"You're not from Birmingham? I know you were there."

I shake my head. "I'm from Atlanta. But at the time, I was going to this boarding school in Sedalia, North Carolina. Near Greensboro. I heard there was going to be a big protest in Birmingham, so I flew there."

"When you say 'flew'..."

"Yes."

"That's a long way."

"And boy, were my wings tired."

"I'll bet."

We walk in silence for a bit.

"I should have been there," I say. "I could've saved them. What am I doing up here? Professor Xavier goes on and on about using our gifts to make the world a better place, but people are dying down there right now, while I'm up here conjugating French verbs."

"There's nothing you could have done. Like you said, if you weren't here, you'd be in North Carolina. You wouldn't have been there anyway. And you couldn't have known in advance that somebody was going to blow up that church."

"But at least I wouldn't be—" I stop myself before I say "surrounded by white people." I just want to be around people who understand. And they _want_ to understand, I'm pretty sure. They like to think they understand, and they try. Scott's trying. But it isn't the same.

I never finish my sentence and Scott never asks me how I was planning to finish it. We reach the house in awkward silence. "I probably couldn't have done anything even if I had been there," I say. "All I can do is fly. I can't turn back time. I can't bring people back to life."

Scott rubs the back of his neck thoughtfully. "You could pull some people out and fly them to safety, though. And Pietro could rush in and pull people out really quickly. I bet Bobby could reinforce a crumbling wall with ice or something."

"That wouldn't save those little girls."

"But it might keep other people from getting injured."

I sigh and grind the ball of my hand into my forehead. "How can we all be so powerful and so powerless at the same time?"

"We can't be everywhere at once," Scott says with a shrug. "We can't do everything."

"Sometimes it's like we can't do anything."

"Yeah."

I start up the steps to the kitchen, then turn back around to look at Scott. "Hey. If someone was trapped by some rubble, you could use your eyes to blast it out of their way."

He looks surprised, then pleased. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I could do that, couldn't I?"

We go to breakfast. I drop my newspaper section on the counter and for the first time see the back page of it. The word "Mutant" in the headline of a different article catches my eye. Some senator from Nebraska is proposing something called the Mutant Registration Act. He says we have to know who and where all the Mutants are, to protect our children. I shake my head and pour myself a bowl of cereal. Bobby instantly launches into an enthusiastic review of last night's _Ed Sullivan_. I'm not even wearing a shirt and nobody notices or cares.


	6. Be True to Your School

**6\. Be True to Your School**

 **Hank**

I'll admit I sometimes let my curiosity get the better of me. But isn't that, after all, the very foundation of science? To wonder about the world, to ask questions, to feel unsatisfied with anything but the empirically determined truth? To do science is to be curious. And there are few pursuits that excite me more than science. Which is why I find myself here, assisting Dr. MacTaggert in her laboratory as evening fades into night. The leaves are turning, the days are getting shorter, and I am settling in to my new routine.

This time of year always makes me think of football. I long to be out on the field, filling my lungs with the crisp autumn air and joining my compatriots in the thrilling dance of mimicked war. I only spent two years of my high school career on the team. They recruited me as a freshman upon seeing my unusual size, and I quickly proved myself a capable offensive tackle. But my teammates quickly discovered what exactly made me so muscular and strong and fast. I was not invited back on the team junior year. And now it seems those two years are all I'll get of football.

Not that I'm disappointed to be here, mind you. Where else could I have the opportunity to assist a famous biologist such as Dr. MacTaggert in groundbreaking research? A real paper will come of this, and she has promised me that when she submits it to a journal, I'll be listed in the byline. Just imagine — my name in _Nature_ or _Science_ before I've even graduated high school! What is football compared to that? Still, I can't help but daydream as I clean and sterilize test tubes. Pietro and Warren would make perfect wide receivers, provided they could use their gifts. I see in Scott the potential to be a great quarterback. A shame I'm the biggest one here; we could really use more muscle. The radio drones on in the background.

"Mutants: they walk among us. They walk among our children, sometimes indistinguishable from normal human beings. We often do not recognize their immense destructive power until it is too late. And make no mistake, they are each and every one of them a walking weapon. No one person should ever wield as much power as they do." Senator Robert Kelly is evidently making some sort of speech. His voice is nasal and unpracticed. I would find it so much easier to hate him if he had charisma. But he wears wire-rimmed glasses and speaks earnestly, like a concerned father. He truly believes what he's saying. And so do the people I hear dimly in the background, cheering wildly.

"Of all the wonders and horrors of this Atomic Age, the Mutant is by far the most dangerous. A small handful of Mutants, depending on the precise nature of their mutation, could take down an army. In fact, I can foresee a day when armies and police forces are replaced completely with Mutants, especially if they continue multiplying at their current rate. What normal people, after all, could do a better job? And once we have given them positions of power, what's to stop them from taking over the government? In fact, why do we need governments at all when we can merely declare allegiance to one super-powerful Mutant or another? Laugh if you must, but feudalism existed long before capitalism. In an age where some people, by sheer virtue of their birth, are so vastly more powerful than others, what's to stop them from imposing a new feudalism upon us – or, indeed, any system they like? The Mutant has the capacity to make capitalism, governments, in fact all of civilization obsolete. Not since Cro Magnon overtook Neanderthal Man have we seen anything like this. They can conquer us. They can supplant us. And I for one will not go gentle into that good night."

"Switch that off, would you? I won't have that sort of talk in my lab." Dr. MacTaggert has returned from the back room. She closes the thick metal door behind her. She tells me there is specialized equipment in that back room, too delicate for me to see or touch. But I never see her take anything out of the room, and she keeps the door padlocked.

I shut the radio off. "I apologize. I like to listen to the radio while I work, and well... I feel I ought to know what Senator Kelly is saying about us, so that maybe I could do something to counter him. He bothers me."

"Don't let him. It's all political posturing, you know. He wants to be president, and he thinks he can build his campaign on the backs of Mutants," she says. "Is everything sterilized?"

"I just put the last batch in the autoclave. It doesn't at all concern you that, at the very least, he believes this anti-Mutant talk will win him votes? What if he's right?"

"Right about what? Right about Mutants?"

"No, I only meant he might be right that America fears Mutants enough that he can become president by playing on those fears. However..."

"However what?"

I bite my lip. "Scott did kill those children. And he's almost certainly not the only Mutant whose gift is both destructive and uncontrollable. Perhaps... perhaps Senator Kelly has a point when he calls us weapons. And we have restrictions on weapons, after all. Laws, permits... I don't agree with most of what he says about us, but registering Mutants does seem fairly reasonable."

"Mutant registration wouldn't have stopped the St. James Massacre," Dr. MacTaggert says. "Even Scott didn't know he was a Mutant. The moment his gifts manifested, he opened his eyes and what came out shocked him as much as anybody. And that's when all such Mutants are most dangerous: before they know. Before they even have a chance to register if they want to." She puts her hands on both my shoulders and looks me directly in the eye. "If you want to counter Senator Kelly, what we're doing here now is more effective than any rally or letter to the editor. If we manage to develop an effective treatment for mutation, we undercut his argument completely. Don't concern yourself with the paranoid ravings of small minds. Keep your head in your work. We'll make their _fears_ obsolete."

"I certainly hope so, Dr. MacTaggert."

She runs a hand through her dark hair and looks around the lab. "Will you be all right by yourself here for a while? I have some paperwork to do in my office."

"Of course."

With a smile, Dr. MacTaggert heads out of the lab, closing the door behind her. I cast a glance at the metal door in the back of the room. She forgot to padlock it this time. My eyes flash from the door to her office, to the whirring autoclave, and back to the strange metal door. Would it be so wrong to take a little peek? I won't touch anything. And I _am_ her lab assistant, after all. Shouldn't I know what we're working with? Anyway, I've got nothing to do at the moment but stand around waiting for the autoclave to finish. It's not as if I'm neglecting my work.

As I said, I sometimes let my curiosity get the better of me.

The door is thick and must feel quite heavy to Dr. MacTaggert, though I swing it open easily. It feels almost like a bank vault. Inside is a small, empty metal room with a second metal door. This one has no lock. Strange. I open it and immediately hear a shriek.

"CLOSE THE DOOR! CLOSE THE DOOR! CLOSE THE DOOR! CLOSE THE DOOR!"

I slam the inner door shut behind me. I am standing in a much larger version of the last room; the floor, ceiling, and walls are all made of gleaming metal. But unlike the last room, which was bare, someone has gone to great effort to make this room feel as homey as possible. Everywhere there are plants, and soothing pictures of mountains draped in autumn foliage. The lighting is warm and dim, the furniture hardwood — and everything a person could need is provided for: a desk, a chair, a bookshelf, a chest of drawers, a bed where an orange tabby looks recently startled from sleep. A television and a radio play at a low volume at the same time. There is a small bathroom off to the side. Soft, colorful carpets almost but don't quite disguise the cold metal of the floor. On the floor nearest the door, where there is no carpet, lie a litter box, a bowl of cat food, and an empty tray with a plate, knife, fork, and glass.

And pacing in the center of the room, alternately wringing his hands and clutching the sides of his head, is a sickly-looking young man. He appears to be 14, maybe 13, but then again perhaps he just looks young. He has pale, sallow skin and deep purple crescents under his eyes, which shot back and forth, looking in every direction but mine.

 _There are exactly 11 students at this school._

"Who are you? You're not supposed to be in here," he says in a reedy, trembling voice.

"I — I'm Hank McCoy. I'm Dr. MacTaggert's lab assistant. And who are you?"

"Oh. She told me about you. You're not supposed to be in here." He won't look at me, and he won't stop pacing.

"Do you... live here? All the time? And what is your name?"

"Where else would I live? You're not supposed to be in here, Hank McCoy." He yanks the cat from off the bed and clutches it to his chest, then curls up on the floor, rocking back and forth. The cat looks miserable but resigned. "Only me and Mommy, and the teachers. And Zabu. Nobody else is allowed in."

"Mommy? The teachers?"

"You're not supposed to be in here, Hank McCoy," he says again. He is rocking ever more violently, his eyes squeezed shut, his voice thick with sobs. The cat wriggles out of his grasp and races under the bed.

"Zabu! Come back!" he cries, diving after the cat.

"Hank, what are you doing? Get out of here at once!"

I spin around. Dr. MacTaggert is standing behind me, her face almost as pale as the boy's.

"Zabu ran away from me, Mommy!"

 _Mommy?_ They look nothing alike. But she rushes to the boy's side and wraps him up in a tight hug. "Shh, shh. It's all right, David. Remember what we talked about? Zabu doesn't like it when you hug him too hard. You must be gentle. Wait for him to come to you."

The boy — David, apparently — is crying and rocking in Dr. MacTaggert's arms. "Hank McCoy isn't supposed to be here. He's not on the list."

She looks up at me. "Hank, please return to the lab. Close the inner door completely before you open the outer one. And wait in the lab for me. All right?"

I nod and do as she says. The test tubes are ready. I place them back in their racks and in the cabinet while I wait for Dr. MacTaggert to return. Eventually, I hear the clang of the door shutting behind her. This time, she remembers to padlock it.

"You weren't supposed to see that."

"Yes, David told me so once or twice. Doctor... what's wrong with him?"

Her entire body seems to deflate. "His... gift... consumes his body. When completely surrounded by metal, he's all right. Mr. Eisenhardt designed that room for him; he was an engineer before coming here, you know. Out in the world, David withers and dies in a matter of hours. However, his consciousness can leap into another's body before he goes, taking them over. But soon enough, he burns through that body as well. So he has to keep jumping, taking more bodies, or... well..."

As she's speaking, the truth slowly dawns on me. "How long did it take you to find out that he can do this?" I ask. "How many times has this happened? How many people has he killed?"

Her eyes flash. "It wasn't his fault."

"How many?"

"Why does it matter?" she explodes. "You can't change the past. There's no point in dwelling on it. And it won't happen again. He's safe in that room. And I'm going to cure him. I am."

"I think if you're harboring a known murderer in this school, the students have a right to know about it."

"So they can do what, report him to the police? Send him to the electric chair? Bring in the state to shut this school down? I'm so close, Hank. I am _so very close_. Please don't tell anyone about this. Please. He's no threat to anyone anymore, not so long as he stays in that room." She's normally so composed, so professional. But right now she seems on the brink of tears.

"What's wrong with him?" I ask.

"I told you already. He burns through—"

"That's not what I meant. What's _wrong_ with him?"

Her eyes well up with tears. She looks away. "He wasn't always like this. I didn't expect it to be so hard for him just to live in a little room. I came to visit him, after all, and the other teachers here, so he wasn't entirely isolated. He had books and a television and a radio. I thought he had everything he needed. I've learned so much since then. I got him a kitten when I realized he needed more companionship than we could give him. Keeping track of time is so important, and the seasons. I had the lights programmed to mimic the rising and setting of the sun. They dim and then turn off as the sun sets. He can turn on his table lamps after dark, of course, but he knows that there's a natural light cycle now. Time is not just numbers on a clock or a calendar. And I switch off the pictures on the wall based on the seasons. And the plants, of course, they keep the air fresh and they keep him calm. Calmer. We all need life around us, a connection to the rest of the natural world. I didn't know that when I first put him in that room. He... he regressed so quickly, so dramatically. He's gotten better, believe it or not, but he's still not entirely himself."

"You effectively placed him in solitary confinement."

"I know."

"He's going insane."

She looks down at the floor, tears running down her cheeks. "I know."

"I won't tell anyone. I promise."

"Thank you, Hank. Truly."

"May I... may I visit him? If that's all right with you and him? He could clearly use more social interaction, particularly with someone closer to his own age. Perhaps I could help him in the short term, while we continue your research."

"I'll be talking it over with him," Dr. MacTaggert says. She wipes her tears away with her hands, sniffles, and stands up straight again. "I would like that for him. And I trust you."

I nod. What is there to say? "It's getting late," I finally tell her. "And I have an English essay that I should really get started on."

"Of course. Good night, Hank."

"Good night, Dr. MacTaggert."

I exit the lab and walk down the hall. When I turn around to look back through the open door, she is still standing alone in the darkening laboratory, cheeks glistening with tears, staring out the window as the sky turns pink with the setting sun.


	7. Heute Nacht oder nie

**7\. Heute Nacht oder nie**

 **Jean**

It is hot and snowing. Big, fat snowflakes fall around me, catching in my hair, swirling into the burning pit at my feet. No, they aren't snowflakes. They are ashes from the chimneys, burned skin and fat, gray and greasy beneath my feet. They are people. They are Magda, maybe. Too many people choking up the ovens. They had to dig a pit over here for more bodies. They picked me from the line to help burn them. They point their guns at me and I stand by the heat of the pit and stoke the fires and sprinkle lime on the bodies. There are tracks, little rails nearby, for carts. Others push the cart to me. The cart is full of Anjas. Her pale, cold little body, naked — stripped of anything valuable — multiplied. Again and again. I lift her tiny, frail body out of the cart and toss her into the pit, and sprinkle some lime, and when I am done, I pick her up again and throw her in again, and the cart never empties. It is always full. There are always more Anjas, and the ashes rain down, more and more, and the pit full of Anjas burns bright in the smoke and the haze.

In the dark, someone's screaming "ANJA!" and I gradually realize that it's me. The covers are unbearably hot; I rip them off, panting, shaking, soaked in sweat. It was a dream. I'm Jean Grey. I'm in Salem Center, in my dorm room, in October. And yet, the nightmare won't end. I flash between the crematorium and the dorm room, sometimes one superimposed over the other, and I can't make it stop. I close my eyes and Anja's still burning. I rip off the covers and I still feel the heat of the fire.

My feet hit the floor and slip on ashes of human skin and fat as I run down the hall to the boys' wing, towards the visions, and they become stronger. I find the right door and yank it open and the oven door clanks open and I throw myself onto Mr. Eisenhardt's bed where he's thrashing and crying and the room is full of corpses.

"WAKE UP!" I scream, shaking him by the shoulders. "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WAKE UP!"

Mr. Eisenhardt awakens with a yell. I collapse on the bed next to him. The corpses disappear. The fires go out. Everything is silent but my gasps and the pounding of feet into the room. A light switches on; I look up and see Anja's enormous face floating above the bed. I yelp and jump back a moment before I realize it's a portrait hanging on the wall.

"Is everything okay?" I turn my head the other way. The St. James Killer is standing in the doorway in pajamas and glowing red sunglasses.

"I... I'm sorry. I had a — _he_ had — Mr. Eisenhardt had a nightmare. And I... I guess I accidentally..." I turn back to Mr. Eisenhardt. "I'm sorry I woke you up. I just... I had to make it stop."

"I know the feeling," Mr. Eisenhardt says quietly.

"What's going on?" Now Bobby's standing in the doorway.

Behind him, Wanda, her hair in curlers, clutching her robe, staring at me with wide eyes. _This is why people don't trust telepaths,_ she thinks.

"Jean absorbed a nightmare," Scott explains.

"Oh great, can she see _all_ our dreams? 'Cause... sometimes I dream stuff that I don't think is appropriate for a lady to see."

"Scott, Bobby, thank you for your concern. Everything's fine. Go back to bed," Mr. Eisenhardt says.

"Only if she promises not to read my mind while I sleep, please," Bobby says.

"I'll try not to," I say.

"Just saying, if you do, I'm not responsible for any of it. That's all subconscious stuff."

Bobby walks back down the hall to his room, but Scott lingers in the doorway. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asks. "You seem pretty shaken up."

I hide my trembling hands under folds in the covers. "I'm fine, thank you."

"Go back to bed, Scott," Mr. Eisenhardt says gently. Scott hesitates for a moment longer, then follows Bobby down the hall. Mr. Eisenhardt gets up and throws on a robe. "I'm sorry you had to see the horrors in my head."

"No, _I'm_ sorry. I was reading your mind. I shouldn't have."

"I know you didn't mean to. Don't ever apologize for your gift. You'll learn to control it in time. For now, I'll try not to have so many nightmares. Better for me anyway. Want some tea?"

I stare at him. "Tea?"

"Tea, yes. Well, _I'm_ not going back to sleep. Are you?"

"Probably not," I admit.

"So let's go downstairs and have some tea and talk about it."

* * *

"How much of that was real?" I hold the steaming mug with both hands, more for comfort than to actually drink.

Mr. Eisenhardt stirs some sugar into his mug. His sleeve lifts a little to reveal the numbers on his arm. "Too much. When we first arrived, they sorted me into one line, my wife and little daughter into another. They gave me a job, to help… dispose... of the bodies. Anja was among them, that first batch I buried. That was the last time I saw her." His voice comes out in a monotonous, emotionless mumble. He never looks up from his mug. "She was too young to be useful, so they gassed her."

"Did... did Magda survive?"

"The camps, yes. It was life afterward that she couldn't survive. We moved to New York and had three more children — that you already know."

"Right. Of course." I press down on my tea bag with my spoon. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't know this. It's none of my business."

"Stop apologizing. You just need more training with Professor Xavier."

"How much more training do I need before people can stop being afraid to dream in the same house as me?"

"Be patient with yourself. You're very powerful, you know. Don't tell him I told you this, but the professor's never seen a more powerful telepath than you. Not even he is more powerful, or _as_ powerful, even. You're only 16, as well, so it will naturally take some time to learn how to control such a gift."

"Lucky me," I mutter.

"Yes." Mr. Eisenhardt's looking at me very seriously. "It doesn't feel like it now, but yes, you are lucky. We're all lucky to have these gifts. You could use your gift to do great things for the world. It's not all other people's nightmares." He gulps down the rest of his tea. "I'm going to give sleep another shot. What about you?"

"I think I'll nurse this tea a while longer," I say, fiddling with my spoon.

He stands up and pats me on the shoulder. "I don't blame you. Don't worry, I don't have so many nightmares. You just got bad luck. I'll have better dreams and you'll have better control and with some luck we won't find ourselves back down here at one in the morning again any time soon. Good night, Miss Grey."

"Good night."

I hear him pad back up the steps. A moment later, I hear somebody else padding very slowly and quietly up the steps. I spin around to see a slender figure with a soft red glow emanating from his face sneaking upstairs from the hallway.

"What are you doing here?" I demand. "Were you listening to us?"

Scott flinches. He turns around to face me, and heads back down the stairs and into the kitchen. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I know it was rude, but... you were on his bed. Screaming. I thought... I thought he might be hurting you. So I didn't want to leave you alone with him, just in case." He stands there in front of the table, rubbing the back of his neck. "But it looks like I didn't have to worry."

"You know him better than I do," I point out. "He designed those glasses you're wearing, right? Would he really be the type to do something like that? He seems so nice."

"Everybody seems nice until they surprise you," Scott says. "I don't mean to say... I mean, some people really are nice. But I don't like to be surprised."

"Well, thanks for checking up on me, I guess. I'm sorry for waking you up."

"It's okay, I couldn't sleep anyway." He stands around awkwardly for a little, then says, "Well, I guess I'll head on back to bed."

"Will you be able to sleep now?"

"No, I'll probably just read a book for a while."

"Come have some tea, then. Keep me company."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Scott chews his lip and looks over at the kettle on the stove. "...Okay."

"I don't blame you," I tell him as he's fixing his tea. "For what happened at the orphanage."

He flinches again, but doesn't turn around. He just dips his tea bag in his mug over and over again. "Thank you, but it was my fault."

"You didn't mean to kill them."

"Doesn't make a difference to them. Doesn't make them any less dead."

"It also doesn't mean you deserve to have everyone hate you."

Scott's run out of things to do with his tea, and he seems to have grudgingly resigned himself to the fact that now he'll have to sit down at the table with me. So he turns around to face me, leaning back against the counter. "You read that article in _Life_ , I guess."

"Of course I did. What Mutant didn't? And anyway, by the time it came out, Professor Xavier was already visiting me, working with me, so if he made the cover of _Life_ , of course I'd have a look. It was good to see that he was helping other Mutant kids. I thought I was the only one, just being an hour away, but to see what he did for you out in Nebraska, well..."

"He saved my life."

"He started this school for you."

"No, not just for me."

" _Because_ of you, though. He brought Miss Adler out to teach you Braille, he brought Mr. Eisenhardt out to make you some glasses so you could see without hurting anyone, he brought Dr. MacTaggert out to testify at your parole hearing. And then a year later, he announces he's starting a school for Mutants and all those same people happen to be faculty members. I don't think that's a coincidence. We're all here because of you."

Scott smirks. "So it's my fault you're here to dream Mr. Eisenhardt's nightmares."

"Boy, you just have to take the worst possible point of view on everything, don't you?"

"I'll never be disappointed."

"You might be. You might miss out on all kinds of good things."

"I'll take my chances."

"Why couldn't you sleep?"

His head snaps back and he blinks very quickly; I can tell by the way his glasses flash dark for an instant. "What?"

"You said you couldn't sleep. Why not?"

Scott shifts awkwardly. "I don't like having a roommate."

"Does Warren snore or something?"

"No, I just... feel more comfortable on my own."

"You're afraid you're going to hurt him, aren't you?"

"Are you reading my mind right now?"

"I don't have to."

He finishes his tea and drops his cup in the sink without saying a word to me. "We should both go back to bed. We've got early classes tomorrow."

"Let's get out of here."

"What?"

"You and me. Right now." My tea is gone and my leg is bouncing up and down. "You don't want to go to sleep because you're afraid you'll accidentally hurt Warren. I don't want to go to sleep because I'm afraid I'll accidentally absorb another nightmare. So let's just get out of here. Let's drive out into the middle of nowhere, where there aren't any minds to read or people to hurt."

"I could hurt you."

"But you won't."

"How do you know?"

"Because you're a good person and you're very careful and I trust you."

"You just met me and it only takes the slightest slip-up for me to kill you."

"So what? I could kill you back."

"It's one in the morning."

"Who cares? We're not sleeping anyway. Let's go. You've lived here for a couple years, right? Where should we go?"

"What would we even do?"

"Drink tea! Not kill people! Come on, Scott, I can't be in this house anymore. Please. Indulge me."

It's impossible to know what kind of look he's giving me behind those glasses. But he looks at me for a while, then sighs. "Okay... I know a place we could go."

* * *

I've got a thermos of tea and a robe wrapped tight around me as I walk with Scott across the top of the Titicus Dam. "Are you sure we're allowed to be here?" I ask him.

"I don't know," he says. "Probably not." I laugh. He's leading me to a squat, square little stone house towards the middle of the dam, right before the falls. The walkway ends with a wrought-iron railing; I lean over it and watch the water trickle down. We haven't had very much rain lately, so it's nice and quiet. I tilt my head back and look up at the stars. It's a clear night and the moon is almost full. I can see the Milky Way in the sky above me, and its reflection in the water of the reservoir below.

"Thank you for taking me here," I say. "I really needed something like this. I'm still jumpy after... after everything."

"You're welcome," he says. Scott screws the thermos open and pours some tea into the cup. He hands the cup to me. It gleams red in the light of his eyes. "It was about the death camp, wasn't it?" he asks. "The dream, I mean."

"How did you know?"

"I figured. It was obviously very disturbing, and, well, it's Mr. Eisenhardt. He never really talks about it, but he has numbers tattooed on his arm and no extended family. It's not hard to put two and two together."

I shiver, pull my robe tighter around me, and hold the cup close to my face to let the hot steam waft up to me. "It was very vivid. It wasn't just... it was like I was there. Like I was living it. Experiencing someone else's thoughts, someone else's dreams, it's not like hearing them speak. It's like being there with them. And that's not a place I ever want to be again."

"That sounds terrible."

I hand him the cup, and he takes a sip. We look out over the reservoir in silence for a moment.

"Do you want a happy memory?" he asks suddenly.

"What?"

"Well, if reading someone's mind is like experiencing what they experienced, that's quite intense, right? And you saw something so horrible that... maybe it would help."

"Are you offering to let me read your mind?"

Scott is carefully not looking at me. "Yeah... just for this one memory. If you want it. If it would help."

"Sure. Turn your face towards me." I get closer to him, reach out, and touch my fingers to his temples.

"Does that help?" he asks.

"Can't hurt," I say. I close my eyes and concentrate. At first, I don't know if it's working or not because everything is still black, and I can still hear the water trickling over the dam. Soon I feel a warmth I didn't feel before, the warmth of a sunny summer day. I feel someone putting glasses on my face and steering me gently towards the railing. Before I can ask Scott what the heck he's doing, I hear Professor Xavier's voice.

"All right, Scott... open your eyes."

I hesitate. I haven't opened my eyes in over a year. At the Boys' Training School, it was that awful padlocked metal blindfold. Here, during the day, it's a folded handkerchief. At night, it's a sleep mask. I've always made sure to have something over my eyes to keep them closed, except in the shower when I squeeze them shut. The glasses feel odd; I can feel air against my eyelids. What if they don't work? What if I hurt someone again?

Professor Xavier interrupts my train of thought. "Do you trust me?" he asks.

He's done a lot for me. He visited me, wrote to me, made sure I got an education. He testified on my behalf at my parole hearing, wrote letters to the governor, wrote letters to the editor. He took me in. Why would he do all that? Why would anybody do all that for a stranger? What does he want from me?

"Do you trust that I would never want anyone to get hurt? That I would never want you to get sent back to reform school?" he asks.

I think on that for a long time. Why would he work so hard to get me out just to send me back? It doesn't make sense. "...Yes," I finally say.

"Then open your eyes."

At first, everything is blurry. It takes my eyes a while to adjust, but once I do, I am speechless. It's a bright, sunny day. The sky is a light lavender with puffy pink clouds, the trees bursting in shades of red, the reservoir a sparkling deep purple. I don't destroy anything. I just see. Everything's a slightly different color than it should be, but I'm seeing it, and it's all so beautiful I start to cry.

"Did he do it?"

"He did it! They work!"

Behind me, Mr. Eisenhardt and Dr. MacTaggert are whooping and cheering. Professor Xavier pulls me into a hug — awkward because of his wheelchair, but I bend over to wrap my arms around his shoulders. He's bald. I never knew he was bald. I keep my eyes open even as they well up with tears, trying to take in absolutely everything.

I open my eyes. It's dark but for the moonlight and the red glow of Scott's eyes. I remove my hands from his temples.

"Thank you," I breathe.

"Did it make you feel better?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"That was here."

"Right here." He looks back out onto the water. "I love this place."

"I think I love it too," I say.

Scott looks at his watch. Why is he wearing a watch? Does he wear it to bed? Did he remember to put it on before he went downstairs? He's such a strange guy. "It's almost three. We should be getting back soon. Do you think you could get to sleep if you tried?"

"I am really tired, but I don't know if I want to try going back to sleep in a house full of people," I say. "I could probably pass out in the backseat of the car."

"Why don't you do that?"

"Well, what would you do?"

"Wait for an hour or so, then wake you up and drive back while it's still early enough for us to sneak back in."

"You would do that? Just wait around for me?"

"Sure. I'll try to think only happy thoughts."

"You're a real great guy, you know that, Scott?"

Scott shrugs bashfully. I climb into the backseat of the car and curl up under my robes. The next thing I know, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. I open my eyes. It's lighter out, but the sun still hasn't come up.

"Hey — we're here," Scott whispers from the driver's seat. I sit up, rubbing my eyes. We're parked outside the school building.

"What time is it?"

"Around five. Did you have any more nightmares?"

"No. I didn't have any dreams at all."

"Good."

I climb out of the car, closing the door behind me as quietly as I can. And without another word, we sneak back up to our rooms.


	8. It's My Party

**8\. It's My Party**

 **Bobby**

It was Wanda's idea, natch, since she thinks she's the school mom or something. I wasn't about to make a big deal about my birthday, since it's so early in the year that everybody's still getting to know one another, and all my friends are back home on Long Island and all. But I guess, being a teacher's daughter, Wanda managed to dig through the student records and find out that October 15th was my birthday. So then she threw together a little party in the living room, with streamers and balloons and music and everything.

And I'm grateful, don't get me wrong. It's a nice thought, but still. It's sort of a sad little party really, there being so few of us, and especially so few girls. Somebody threw on a Shirelles record expecting people to dance, but there's not enough girls for all the boys to dance with. It's a real sight watching all the guys fight over Jean. Hank's got this old fashioned gentleman act going, all hand-kissing and poetry-reciting. Jason Wyngarde is really laying it on thick, making psychic visions like ballerinas dancing in the air to impress her. Jean must have danced with every guy here except Morty, but she looks pretty bored if you want to know the truth. And everybody avoids Wanda and Lorna because nobody wants to get on Mr. Eisenhardt's bad side. It's a pretty sorry excuse for a school dance, if you want to call it that.

So here I am, the birthday boy, over by the snack table with Scott, who's just standing against the wall nursing some punch and looking at his shoes. He's always looking at his shoes, which you'd think would be dangerous on account of his eyes and all. One of these days his glasses are gonna fall off and he's gonna blast his feet to smithereens.

"Boy, you look like you're having a time," I tell him.

"Just wondering how long this is going to last," he says.

"How long what's going to last?"

Scott gestures at the room. "This school. Mutants. Mutants living freely, having parties, having fun. What happens if that bill passes?"

"Sheesh, you're worried about _that_? There's nothing we can do about it. Might as well enjoy ourselves while we can."

"I suppose."

"And anyway, isn't Professor X best friends with the president or something?"

"Professor X?" Scott raises an eyebrow above the top of his glasses.

"Yeah, you know... Dr. M, Mr. E, Professor X, Miss A... takes less time to say. I'm a busy man, I ain't got time to say everybody's full name. You got that, S?"

Scott smirks. "I guess." He swirls his drink around. "I wouldn't call the professor and President Kennedy best friends, exactly. He _is_ one of the most famous Mutant rights advocates. So they talk on the phone sometimes."

"Well, that's more than any of us can say. And Kennedy's pro-Mutant, right?"

"He's sympathetic. At least that's what the professor says."

"So we've got nothing to worry about."

"Hm." Scott frowns. There's always something to worry about, I guess.

"I'm surprised you're not chasing after Jean like everybody else," I say.

He shrugs. "I know I don't have a chance with her."

"What? I thought you two were spending all kinds of time together."

"We're friends, is all. She doesn't like me that way."

"You and every other guy here, buddy."

One song ends and a new one starts, and Jean pulls herself away from Jason to sit down on the couch next to Wanda. But she's just barely got there when Warren sits down next to her. He's taken to cutting holes in the backs of his shirts and jackets, to let the wings through; I haven't seen him in his old harness and trench coat in weeks. He looks more comfortable now, I think. He stretches one wing over the back of the couch until it's wrapped around Jean's shoulders, real smooth. And she and Wanda start giggling, and he's grinning like he's some sort of Don Juan, and I'm just disgusted by the whole sorry spectacle.

Honestly, I thought Warren was better than that. It's so corny, the old yawn-and-stretch, but with wings. It's not as clever as he thinks it is, the lousy fink. And anyway, going after Jean like all the other guys is so unoriginal. All of a sudden, I'm sick of this whole stupid party and this whole stupid school. All these pathetic girl-crazy guys and annoying girls.

"I'm leaving," I tell Scott.

"What? We haven't even cut the cake yet. Aren't you going to open your presents?"

"Later," I say. "I need some air."

So I go out into the hallway where Miss Adler and Miss Daucourt are smoking. They're supposed to be chaperoning the party, but they're out here instead because this is hardly even a school at all. I storm past them towards the front door.

"Are you doing all right, birthday boy?" Miss Daucourt asks.

"I'm fantastic!" I shout. Then something occurs to me. I spin around to face them. "Miss Adler, you can see into the future, right?"

"That's right."

"Tell me this, then: does it all end in nuclear fire? Do we blow ourselves up?"

"No," she says. "Not as far as I can see."

"That's a damn shame," I say, and I march out the door, slamming it behind me. I don't even care that I just cursed in front of two teachers, and ladies at that. The semester's not even half over and I'm ready to leave this place in the dust. It's a pretty warm night for October, but I'm shivering. But I don't go back inside. That wouldn't make a difference anyway.

I'm out there on the front steps for a couple minutes before I start feeling sort of silly about the whole thing. I don't even know why I stormed out, to be honest. I guess I just got fed up with all the little things that have been bothering me about this place. I don't like living away from home. I miss having my own room and my bed and my dog and even my parents. And I probably just made a fool of myself in front of a bunch of people who were just trying to be nice to me, throwing me a birthday party and all. But how am I supposed to sneak back into the party after making a scene like I did? I'm trying to figure it all out when Lorna steps out next to me.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," I say. Boy, we're a couple of real sparkling conversationalists.

She hands me a wrapped gift. It's big and flat and square — obviously a record. "I didn't know if you were coming back, so I thought maybe I ought to give you your present now."

"Thanks. What is it?"

"Open it."

I tear off the wrapping paper and squint to try to make out the title in the dark.

"It's by Tom Lehrer. Have you ever heard of him?"

I shake my head.

"Well, I only thought you might like it because I know you like Allan Sherman, and at first I thought I might get you an Allan Sherman record but I didn't know which ones you had, and Tom Lehrer is sort of similar, in terms of being funny, at least, so I thought you'd like it and I hope you do, he's got a song on there about poisoning pigeons, I mean it's pretty cruel but it's also funny, not that I would ever poison pigeons, I just... I just... well, I hope you like it, is all."

I smile a little. "Sure, I hate pigeons. Let's go back to the living room and put it on and horrify everyone."

"Yaybo!" Lorna squeals.

I almost fall over. "Where'd you hear that?"

"I heard Warren saying it," Lorna says. "I think it's Negro slang."

I stifle a laugh. I'm gonna be real nice and not tell her I made it up. Still, it's catching on.

"Well, if the Negros are saying it, it's _got_ to be cool," I tell her. "Yaybo!"

"Yaybo!"

We go back in. I'm relieved to see that Jean's not dancing with Warren. Now she's trying to coax Scott out onto the dance floor. I almost don't want to interrupt them because he looks terrified and can't dance at all, and it's pretty funny. I give them a couple of awkward verses, then take the Shirelles record off and put on my new birthday album. At first everybody seems confused by the peppy, old-timey piano music. Then he starts with the talk about poisoning pigeons, and nobody knows how to react.

Lorna holds out a hand to me and bows. "May I have this dance, sir?" she asks.

"Indeed, Madame, you may," I tell her, bowing back. We go nuts on the dance floor while everybody else watches. Wanda's wrinkling her nose and Scott looks about ready to punch me. Warren's the only one laughing at the lyrics, and that says a lot, because he's got more in common with pigeons than anybody here, when you think about it. Lorna's a pretty funny girl. Maybe this party wasn't such a terrible idea after all. Maybe I'll even start to like it here.


	9. Two Lovers

**9\. Two Lovers**

 **Lorna**

I've got to weave my way through cameramen and fancy recording equipment and jump over all the wires snaking across the floor to get to my dad's workshop. The crew stare at my green hair, but I pretend not to notice. When I finally get to the workshop, I close the door behind me. Daddy's lying on his back on the floor, his head hidden underneath a mess of wires and metal, levitating four tools at once. I'm a little jealous; I control metal, same as him, but I could only lift one tool with my mind, and never with that kind of precision. But he's got four of them in the air, hard at work on Teledar. It's a sort of machine he's been working on for Professor Xavier; it amplifies telepathy so he can find Mutants psychically before their gifts get so out of control that they make the paper. That's why they call it Teledar, like telepathy and radar. At least, that's what they're calling it right now. Daddy keeps changing the name.

"Are you gonna hide back here the whole time the documentary crew is filming?" I ask him.

"Yes, _Sternchen_ , I am avoiding the cameras. And you should too. If Char — Professor Xavier wants to use the students here as political pawns to try and soften the bigots' hearts, at the very least my own children won't be among them. He knows precisely how I feel about this little stunt, but he still went ahead and invited CBS."

"Well, I didn't want to be in the documentary anyway. I just came back to ask you, can you give me and Bobby a ride to the train station?"

"What do you want to go to the train station for?"

"Oh, you know, it would get us out of the school, away from all those cameras." I figured I ought to lead with that one, because that at least should make him happy. "And I wanted to take Bobby down to the Bronx, show him around our old neighborhood."

"Why don't you ask Wanda to drive you? She'd probably like to come along. Pietro, too."

Typical. He doesn't like Bobby and he doesn't want me to be alone with him, not even in public, not even for a few hours. "I don't want to make a whole family thing out of it, Daddy; Bobby would feel like a third wheel. I just wanna show him the old house, maybe go to the Botanical Gardens or the zoo or something."

"It's pretty cold for that," he says. His face is still buried in the machine; he hasn't looked at me once. "You sure Bobby hasn't got other ideas?"

My face burns. "If you're suggesting that Bobby might try something, then you don't know Bobby very well! He's a perfect gentleman. In fact, he hasn't even so much as kissed me on the cheek, and we've been going steady for almost a month! I think you can trust him to bring me back from my own home in one piece. And for the record, this was all my idea!"

"Fine, fine, you can go. But you've still got to ask your sister to drive you. I've got to concentrate on this; if I stop now, I'll forget where I was and have to start all over again."

I sigh. " _Fine._ "

It's not that I don't like my sister. Really, I do. Back when we were kids, before Mom died, we were closer. Pietro always used to tease me, and Wanda protected me from him. She was always sort of bossy, but it's gotten worse since Mom. She's no fun anymore, she just frets about everything and tells me what to do all the time. But she can drive and I can't, so I go looking for her and hope she's in a good mood.

I find her in her room with Jean, and they're just sitting on the bed gabbing. I guess they're best friends or something now, but I think that's just because they've got to be. They're both girls, they're both about the same age, so they'd better get along. And of course I get left out in the cold, being the annoying little sister. I wonder if Jean knows about the stuff Wanda said about her before they became friends — all that jazz about how she didn't want to be near Jean on account of she might read all of Wanda's private thoughts? She probably does, being a telepath and all. But now they're thick as thieves, giggling about something or other. What a couple of phonies.

"Hey Wanda, can you give me and Bobby a ride to the train station? We want to go down to the city."

"Ooh, you're going to the city?" Jean asks. "Wanda, let's go with them! I've been itching to get out of here. We'll make a day of it, get lunch, go window shopping on Fifth Avenue..."

"I don't want to go all the way to Manhattan, just Pelham Parkway," I say.

"Fifth Avenue does sound nice," Wanda muses. Oh, here we go. My one big chance to get Bobby alone and now everybody wants to come along and ruin it. Why does everybody think Manhattan is so great, anyway? It's crowded and noisy and dirty and smelly, yet everybody acts like it's the center of the universe. It's the snobbiest open sewer in the world.

"If you want, Bobby and I will get off at Botanical Gardens and you and Jean can keep going until Grand Central. Then we can set a time to meet back up at Croton Falls. But I don't want anything to do with Fifth Avenue," I say.

"Is Dad okay with you being on your own like that?" Wanda asks.

"I won't be on my own, I'll be with Bobby. And he said it was fine," I say.

"Look, you and Bobby can walk around Central Park or something, okay? I don't like the idea of you two being so far away the whole day. If you don't come to the train station at the right time, I won't have any idea where you are, and it'll be harder to find you."

I can already tell there's no way I'm gonna change her mind. She's got that steely-eyed look she got from Daddy.

"Okay, _fine_. We'll go to Manhattan. Come on, we don't have all day." I stomp off to find Bobby.

"Ask Pietro if he wants to come too," Wanda calls from her room.

I changed my mind. I do hate my sister.

* * *

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to spend so much of my Saturday waiting on a train platform in the middle of November. It's quite chilly, and my sweater isn't helping much. Bobby takes off his coat and wraps it around my shoulders. Like I said: gentleman. I think about cuddling up to him a little, but that would probably just make me colder. Don't get me wrong, he's not as cold as he was — he's getting better about controlling his gift — but he doesn't exactly keep me warm either. We hold hands instead. His hand is about room temperature, which at least is warmer than the wind.

"I'm sorry we can't see the Gardens or the zoo," I tell him.

"That's okay, I've seen them both on field trips."

"Oh. Well... Central Park is nice too. You've been there too, I guess."

"Yeah."

"It's just not home. I'll show you sometime, though. Take you to Levine's Deli. I swear, they've got the best egg creams in the city."

"I can't wait." He sounds like he can easily wait. He's staring pensively into middle distance. He's been so close-mouthed lately, but he won't tell me what's wrong.

"So... you think that documentary's gonna smear us?" I ask.

He shrugs and doesn't say anything.

"Professor Xavier wouldn't let them in if they were going to smear us," Jean says.

"They probably told him they were playing it all sympathetic even if they aren't," Pietro says. Yes, he did decide to come along. I think New York City must be the only place with a fast enough pace that he won't go crazy with boredom. He's zipping around the platform and he'll probably zip between me and Bobby as soon as we get there. Just my rotten luck.

"Wouldn't he know if they were lying?" Wanda asks. "Being a telepath and all?"

"He doesn't read people's minds without permission," Jean says quickly. "It isn't ethical."

"Of course he wouldn't," Wanda says quickly. "Did you hear what they're calling it?"

"What?" Jean asks.

" _Children of the Atom_."

"That's original," I sneer.

"I hate it when people call us that," Wanda says, wrinkling her nose. "I don't want to be associated with the atom bomb. It's insulting."

"But it's true," I say. "That's where we came from."

"Not us!" Wanda says. "Opa Jakob worked with nuclear radiation long before anybody thought to turn it into a weapon. Jean's father, too."

"Where did you get your gift from, Bobby?" I ask.

"Huh? Oh. Well, my mom told me that my grandma used to work in a factory painting glow-in-the-dark watches. Maybe that's where I got it from."

"See?" Wanda says triumphantly. "No bombs."

"But lots of atoms," I say.

"Well, people hear 'atom' and they think of the bomb. I only mean we shouldn't emphasize it, that's all."

"It'll probably be all about Scott," Pietro says between lightning-fast laps around the platform. "These things always are."

"I hope not," Jean says. "It's so hard on him, the way the press and everybody attacks him."

"Did he tell you that on one of your late-night dates?" Wanda teases.

Wow. That's some good gossip. I raise my eyebrows at Bobby, but he's not paying any attention. Well fine then, I'll just eavesdrop on my own. They're talking quietly, but the wind picks their voices up and carries them over to me. Jean's cheeks are red, and it isn't entirely from the cold.

"No," she says. "I mean, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on, you can tell me," Wanda says. "I've heard you two sneaking off in the middle of the night. I think it's romantic. I only hope you're on the pill."

"It isn't like that."

"I bet."

"Should I just _run_ to New York?" Pietro whines. "I'll get there faster than this stupid train."

"Nobody's forcing you to come, you know," I tell him.

"Somebody's gotta babysit you," he says.

The nerve! "Nobody has to babysit me! Why does everybody treat me like a little kid? I'm fifteen years old, Bobby's sixteen, and we can take care of ourselves. And you're not so responsible yourself, Pietro, running around at top speed in public, flaunting your Mutant gift for all the world to see. Maybe _we_ need to babysit _you_."

"Maybe we wouldn't treat you like a little kid if you didn't act like one," Wanda says. I can't believe we're getting into it right now. I mean, I believe we're getting into it, just not in front of Jean and Bobby. "Honestly, throwing a temper tantrum because we're going to Manhattan instead of the Bronx. You're such a brat."

"I'm not."

"You are. You're so spoiled. It's because you're the baby, and you're Dad's favorite, and he lets you do just whatever you want."

"That's not true!"

"Nobody ever says 'no' to you."

"I'm not Dad's favorite."

"Yes, you are!"

"We both know who Dad's favorite is, and it isn't any of us!" I explode.

"Train's here," Bobby says.

So it is. Pietro races onto the train as soon as the doors open, and in a flash he's disappeared into one of the furthest cars down. The rest of us sit down all in a row straddling the aisle, me next to Bobby and Wanda next to Jean. Wanda takes the window seat and looks out, and doesn't say anything at all. I wrap my arm around Bobby's and lean my head against his shoulder, and he smiles and wraps an arm around me. He keeps it there the whole way to the city.

I hear the engineer announce the Botanical Gardens stop. I stand up and motion for Bobby to follow. Wanda doesn't say anything or try to stop us. Before we get off I tell her I'll see her back at Croton Falls at six, but she either doesn't hear or pretends not to. Jean hears, though, and that's enough.

We go to Levine's Deli after all, and get those egg creams, and Bobby agrees with me that they're the best in the city. I show him our old brick house on Barnes Avenue where some other family lives now, and Christopher Columbus High School, where Wanda and Pietro and I went last year. Then we walk hand-in-hand up the strip of grass and trees along the parkway, slowly making our way back to the Gardens. He's so quiet the entire time.

"Are you bored?" I ask.

"No, of course not."

"I only wondered because all of a sudden this looks pretty conceited, showing you all my old haunts like they mean anything to you. It's only that... well... I really like you, Bobby, and I want you to know all about me."

"I want to know all about you too," he says. "This is real nice. It's a real nice neighborhood."

"And I want to know all about _you_ ," I press. "You're so quiet lately. It isn't like you at all. If something's wrong, you can tell me, you know."

Suddenly he grabs me and hugs me tight, and kisses me hard and passionate right on the mouth. I'm too surprised to do anything at first, but then I kiss him back and wrap my arms around his neck. When he pulls back, my eyes meet his and I'm just breathless. It's like a Hollywood romance. I gaze into his deep blue eyes and smile, but he doesn't smile back. We walk back to the train station towards the setting sun, hand-in-hand and silent.

Wanda, Pietro, and Jean are waiting for us back at the Croton Falls station, shivering on the platform. Wanda and Jean are carrying bulging shopping bags. So much for window shopping.

"I'm sorry," I tell Wanda.

She only nods, and we all climb back into the car and make our way back home.


	10. I'm Leaving It Up to You

**10\. I'm Leaving It Up to You**

 **Scott**

It's the last class on the last day of school before Thanksgiving vacation and everybody is packed and nobody is paying attention. We're sitting around the big table in the classroom that isn't the science lab and the professor is trying very hard to get us to care about his government lesson, but everybody's practically jumping out of their seats. I suppose if I were going home this afternoon, I'd be excited too. As it is, I'm not looking forward to nine days of an empty, quiet house. It's odd, since I was so nervous about people moving in. I've become less frightened that I will hurt them accidentally. Mostly, I'll miss Jean. I hope I can sleep the whole night through with Warren out of the room, but if I can't, I don't know what I'll do to pass the time. Maybe drive down to the dam by myself. That's a depressing thought.

"Let's talk about how a bill becomes a law," Professor X says.

Everybody groans. "This is kids' stuff!" Bobby says. "We all know this already."

Professor X continues. "Very well. Let's talk about how the proposed _Mutant Registration Act_ could become a law."

The room falls silent.

"Does it perchance involve Mike Wallace slandering the Mutant community on national television, giving Robert Kelly an hour to spread his message of hate, and twisting your words to suit his agenda?" Hank asks.

The documentary aired on Wednesday night. It did not go well.

"Well, that's a matter of influencing public opinion," the professor says. "Which can, of course, influence policy..."

"How many politicians do you think watched that report?" Warren asks. "I'll bet it influenced _their_ opinion. Why did you let those people in here, anyway?"

"They told me they would be neutral."

"They lied to you."

"I know that now. But it was worth the risk to get our message out. And I do believe, despite all their selective editing, that I managed to get through to some discerning viewers. I've already written a letter to the editor of the _New York Times_ , correcting the many errors in that report."

"Who's going to read it, though?" Warren demands. "Who's going to believe you?"

The professor exhales sharply and raises his voice. "So. Who knows where in the legislative process the Mutant Registration Act is now?"

Hank raises his hand. "It's in the Judiciary Committee at the moment, but Chairman Eastland has said that he wants to get it onto the Senate floor before the winter recess."

Professor X nods approvingly. "And once it is on the House floor -"

"We do everything in our power to stop it or kiss our butts goodbye," Warren says. He's leaning back in his seat - or as far back as his wings will allow - with his arms crossed.

"Do you have anything constructive to say, Mr. Worthington? Because if not, you may leave this class at once and I will tell your parents that you spent this day undoing the excellent record you built up over the past three months."

"Why aren't we marching?" Warren asks. "I mean it. Why aren't we out in the streets? Why aren't we doing _anything_? Our lives are at stake! People are dying! And these... these _adults_ keep telling me to calm down, that everything will be fine if we only talk quietly to the people in charge and say nice things on TV and beg the world to pretty pretty please not hate us. And it isn't working. It isn't _going_ to work. I almost don't care _what_ we do, just so long as it's _something_!" He stands up from the table, grabbing his books. "Tell my parents whatever you want."

We all silently watch him storm out of the room. The professor is rubbing his head.

"You've got to admit, he has a point," Wanda says quietly. "We really ought to do something, and we should do it now."

"You're here to _learn_ , not to be activists," Professor X says. "First you must learn from history and from others' examples — and learn how to express your opinions _dispassionately_. _Then_ you may apply those lessons to the real world."

"We don't have time to learn from history," Wanda says. "It's happening _right now_. What have we got to lose?"

I hear a little groan from two chairs to my left. Jean is wincing and pinching the bridge of her nose.

I lean over and tap her on the shoulder. "Are you okay?" I whisper.

 _It's only a psychic headache,_ she says.

 _You're still getting those?_

 _Not as often as I used to. But sometimes, yeah._ I suppose if she can talk with me telepathically, it mustn't be too bad.

"So let's say it makes it to the floor of the House," Wanda says, sounding more excited by the minute. "How do we stop them from passing it? We could research where each of the representatives stand on Mutant rights and focus our attention on calling and sending letters to the ones who appear to be on the fence. Maybe gather signatures for a petition! Maybe we could even take a class trip to Washington to meet with them in person!"

"Yeah!" Bobby says. "And what about the president? He's on our side, right? He could give a speech telling all the Congressmen to vote against it! And meet with us when we come to Washington!"

" _When_ we come to Washington?" Professor X asks.

"Professor," Hank says, "perhaps we are counting our chickens before... well, before the eggs have been laid. But if we are to learn how a bill becomes a law, what better way to learn than by stopping this one in its tracks? After all, aren't you a progressive educator? Isn't this part of some educational philosophy or another - learning by doing?"

"Are you referring to experiential education?"

"Sure, why not?"

Another groan from Jean. She's leaning over the table now, her face almost touching her open notebook. This time, everyone notices.

"Jean, what's wrong?" Wanda asks.

"I... oh no..." She starts crying. "I'm sorry, it's just... more and more people... finding out... I can't... I can't shut them out, their thoughts, their sadness, I can't... oh no... oh Lord..."

Wanda rubs her back. "You should lie down, take an aspirin, some water..."

"What's going on?" Bobby asks. "What is she talking about?"

I see the color drain from the professor's face.

"The president's been shot," Jean whimpers.

* * *

Class is cancelled. We pile into the billiard room, where the only TV in the house is. We've temporarily suspended our hatred of CBS to watch them cover the story, since NBC and ABC are still showing their regular programming. Just about every single person in the school huddles close to that set, glued to the screen. Only Jean isn't there; she's resting in her dorm room. She's probably hearing the news anyway, filtered through the thoughts of a hundred different neighbors whether she wants to hear it or not.

We've pulled over all the chairs in the room, but it still isn't enough. Mr. Eisenhardt is on the couch surrounded by his children, clutching their hands with a desperation I've never seen in him. Jason and Warren are sitting on the billiard table behind the couch, Warren's earlier explosion completely forgotten. Morty and Bobby are lying on the floor, their faces dangerously close to the screen. And everyone is crying at least a little, except for Miss Adler and Miss Daucourt, who seem oddly calm. The phone is ringing off the hook — parents calling, saying they're coming to pick their kids up early.

"Who would do this?" Lorna asks.

"I don't know," Professor X says.

"It has to be the Cubans. Or the Russians," Hank says. "Are we at war now? Are they going to kill anyone else?"

"I don't know," Professor X says.

I walk over to where Miss Adler is sitting and pull her aside. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?" I ask. "That's why you're so calm."

"Yes," she says.

I feel a fury building in me. I keep my voice down to a whisper, to not alert anyone else. But I almost spit the words out. "Then why in God's name didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you stop it? You could have stopped this."

"No. I couldn't." Miss Adler puts a hand on each of my shoulders. "I was young and idealistic once too, you know. When I started getting my visions, of course I told people. Of course I tried to stop them from coming true. But you know what? They all did. What I see _will_ happen. We all have a destiny, Scott. Jack Kennedy's destiny was to get shot to death in Dallas, Texas. It was his destiny all the way from the day he was born to the moment he died."

"He hasn't died yet," I tell her. "He's in the hospital. They're... the doctors are..."

Miss Adler nods to the TV.

"The priests... who were with Kennedy," Walter Cronkite stammers, "the two priests who were with Kennedy say that he is dead of his bullet wounds. That seems to be about as close to official as we can get at this time."

Sobs fill the room. I feel strangely numb. I think about how appallingly easy it is to kill a person. We're all so fragile. Even the president, with all his Secret Service agents and all his protection, can be killed in his own country. We're all destined to die somehow, like Miss Adler said, and I'm not even sad about it. I just idly wonder how I'm destined to die. I can't cry at all, and it's so odd. Normally I feel sad and anxious a lot of the time, and I don't know what to do. But for some reason, when everybody else is too upset to function, I start to feel calm and everything is clear and I see a path in front of me. It's like that now. I know what to do.

Somebody's got to tell Jean.

I walk upstairs to her room. The door is open, but the light is off and the blinds are drawn and she's lying in bed with her face to the wall.

"Jean? Are you awake?"

"Yes," she says, her voice thick with tears.

"He's dead."

"I know."

I've never been in her room before, but I feel like I should come in now. I sit down on the edge of her bed. "How do you feel?"

"I don't know," she says. She sits up in bed and wipes her eyes. "I'm feeling too much of everyone else's shock and sadness to know how I feel. It could be worse, I guess. There's a lot of Republicans around here." She laughs. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm pathetic."

"You aren't pathetic."

"I keep collapsing. I can't handle my gift. I'm weak. Everybody feels sorry for me."

"You're not weak. You're just the opposite — you're powerful. You're so powerful, you can't control all the power you've got. None of us can. _I_ certainly can't. That's why we're all here."

She nods, and is quiet for a minute. "Scott... I'm so tired. What do you think of me really?"

My throat tightens. "What?"

"Be honest: do you like me or do you only pity me? Because sometimes you're so nice to me and, and you drive me out to the dam and we talk all night and it's wonderful, but then in the daytime you avoid me. You're always avoiding me and I'd sort of thought that we both liked our little insomnia club, but I've noticed that you only seem to spend time with me when I'm weak, when I need help. And that's very nice of you, but if you're just helping out the crazy girl and you don't like me at all, I'd like for you to tell me so I know to stop wasting your time."

I could tell her that I like her so much I don't know whether to embrace her or run screaming from the room, but the impulse to run almost always wins. I could tell her that I live for our nights on the dam, that I don't know how I'll make it an entire week without her, that sometimes I hug my pillow pretending it's her. I could tell her that I'm terrified of her, of what she makes me feel, of what I could do to her if I lost control. I could tell her that I lose control just being around her, seeing her face, and that scares me more than anything.

But I don't tell her any of those things. Instead I rub the back of my neck and look at her pillow where a few strands of red hair are still stuck to the indentation her head left and I stammer, "No, no, it isn't like that at all. I do like you. You're quite a nice girl, who wouldn't like you? I... I consider you my best friend, and I want to keep being your friend, and I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but... but you really are very nice."

Why do I ever say anything at all? I manage to lift my eyes to meet hers, sure that I've just made her feel worse. To my shock, she's smiling and gazing at me with wide, shining eyes. She wraps her arms around me and presses her lips against mine. I'm dizzy with confusion and happiness, and somewhere in my mind I hear her say: _Telepath, remember?_ I hold her close, breathing in the scent of her skin, feeling the softness of her hair. I've thought about this moment so many times, I almost don't believe it's real.

"Get out of my daughter's bed," I hear a woman bark.

My head snaps back. Jean's mother is standing in the doorway in her coat and hat, and she's staring at us with horror in her red-rimmed eyes. I rip myself apart from Jean and back away into the farthest corner of the room. For the record, I wasn't _in_ her bed; I was _on_ her bed. That's a big difference. That should mean something, shouldn't it?

"Jean, get your things. We're going home."

Her suitcase is already packed and waiting by the door. Jean jumps out of bed, throws her shoes and coat on, and takes one look back at me.

"Jean," her mother says, "it's time to go."

"Goodbye, Scott," she says, and picks up her suitcase and follows her mother out the door.

I watch them walk to their car from the window. They're having an argument, but I can't hear most of the words. I hear Mrs. Grey say "St. James Killer," and then Jean says something, and then her mother says something else. I hear her say "St. James Killer" again.

"HIS. NAME. IS. SCOTT," Jean shouts. I hear it through the window and in my mind. The car starts to shake and rise into the air. Not so much, just a few inches off the ground. Jean and her mother both watch it in shock, and within a few seconds it falls again. Did that happen? Did Jean do that? They both seem shaken. Her mother quickly grabs Jean's suitcase and stuffs it into the trunk. They get in the car and I can't hear anything after that. I lean my forehead against the cool glass of the window and watch them drive away until their car disappears into the trees.


	11. If I Had a Hammer

**11\. If I Had a Hammer**

 **Charles**

By late December, I'd come to know FBI Agent Fred Duncan quite well, and he had certainly come to know me. We each spied on each other in our own way. He was a click on the telephone, a black car following at a discreet distance. I was a tickle in his mind, a queer feeling that he wasn't truly alone. He didn't have any personal animosity towards Mutants. He was a professional. He did the job his government assigned him to do. During his long stakeouts on Graymalkin Lane, he would occasionally indulge in some amateur bird-watching. He was having problems with his wife. He seemed less sympathetic to Mutants after nights spent on the couch.

On this particular day, I had allowed Agent Duncan's thoughts to quiet to a dull murmur in the back of my mind. He knew I was headed to Washington; I knew he intended to follow me there. As Max pulled the car out onto the main road, I saw no black government car half-hidden in the trees and felt no sign of his thoughts nearby. He had beaten me to the airport, perhaps even to Washington. Much more subtle than following me directly. Well played, sir.

"I heard an interesting story recently," Max said from the front seat.

"What's that?"

"A number of young Mutants around New York with more... _obvious_ gifts, well, they run away from home and they've got no place to go. So they've begun squatting in the old subway tunnels and sewers beneath the city."

" _Sewers?_ "

"Awful, I know. Even the other homeless people in the city, they can't go near."

"That's terrible," I said.

"Indeed. Imagine what a scholarship to this school could do for them."

"If only we could afford that. I'm already throwing too much of my own money into this. We need more students who can pay full tuition."

"More students who aren't our children," he said.

"That reminds me... how goes the work on Teledar?"

"Oh, that. It's going well. I changed the name, though."

"Again?"

"It's Cerebro now. Do you like it better?"

"I like them both fine."

"Well, I prefer Cerebro."

"Please tell me that's the last change," I teased.

"I promise nothing." He laughed.

"Well, perhaps once it's up, it'll help us find more students, then perhaps we can talk about scholarships."

"More motivation for me to work on it," he said.

We arrived at Westchester County Airport. Max helped me into my wheelchair.

"Thank you. I can take it from here."

"Well, good luck herding cats," he said. "I still say it's no use talking to them. They clearly have no interest in listening."

"If I gave up and they won," I told him, "I'd always wonder if I could have stopped it."

* * *

The Oval Office had a new red rug, and it unnerved me. It reminded me of blood.

"I know, I know," President Johnson said. "Jack had it put in while he was down in Dallas. The curtains, too. They replaced all the furniture before Jackie got back, but the rug'll have to stay for now. He wanted bright colors, youthful. Nobody thought... well..." He sat himself down on the couch nearest my wheelchair.

"I know I told your secretary over the phone, but I want to say again, sir, how terribly sorry I am," I said.

"Thank you, Charles. We all are. It was a tragedy. But the world doesn't stop turning. I'm sorry it took so long to meet with you. You know the sort of time we've been having down here."

"Of course, sir. I'm glad we could meet now, what with the Senate debating the MRA. I tried to offer my testimony, but they've shut me out..."

"Yes well, they're worried you'll use your... your _gift_ to unfairly influence Congress."

"I understand that. But I was hoping, Mr. President, that you might use your influence on this issue. I realize it's late and you have many other issues to contend with, but we have so few allies in Congress. We could use all the persuasive power a president can muster."

Johnson shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "Now look, I'm gonna be completely honest with you here. I have a limited amount of political capital, and I aim to use it strategically. Now, I've already upset the Dixiecrats by pushing for the Civil Rights Act. On top of that, my advisors and I are planning something along the lines of Roosevelt's New Deal — yes, that ambitious. I want to help the poor, protect this country from the threat of global communism, improve race relations — and yes, I want to help Mutants too. But all this takes _capital_. This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. I can't wave a magic wand and make Mutants safe: I need _you_ out there, changing the minds of everyday people, creating the political pressure that'll give me and every Mutant-sympathetic member of Congress enough cover to publicly support you. You want Mutant rights? Make it so it's no longer political suicide for a senator to speak out in Mutants' favor. Give me that, Charles. At least as much of it as you can. If I don't have that, I can't do a damn thing."

"Mr. President, forgive me, but we've been trying to do that, and it hasn't been going terribly well. We need your help. I know you pride yourself on being a friend to the Negroes. Their cause and ours has always struck me as very similar."

"Last I checked, Charles, Negroes didn't have uncontrollable laser beams shooting out their eyes."

"Energy beams."

"What's that?"

"They're — excuse me, sir — they're energy beams, not laser beams. It's a... it's a concussive force, you see..."

"Nobody cares. Now look here, Charles, the point is this: Negroes are just regular people. They've got no crazy superpowers, and half of America is _still_ terrified of them. I know what you have to tell the public to get them on their side, but surely you must understand that they don't fear you because you're different. They fear you because you're _dangerous_. Christ on a cracker, you could be brainwashing me right now and no one would ever know it, myself included. That's why they want to keep tabs on you. You have more power than any human being should ever have. And I know you were born that way, I know it's not your fault. But can you really blame anyone for fearing a group of people that could level a city without trying?

"And let me tell you, there's more of Negros than there are of you. There's certainly more poor people. You ask me to spend my capital, well I've been emptying my pockets for all those folks. Am I gonna spend my political capital on a tiny group of scientists' children with powers that terrify the whole world? It's a harder sell for a smaller impact. Not to mention, they're only planning to register you, which you've got to admit is fairly reasonable, considering. Nobody's talking about rounding you up. Nobody's talking about killing you. Now, imagine you were me and ask yourself: what would you do? How would you spend your political capital? It's... I'm sorry, Charles, I've got enough on my plate without taking up your lost cause. And make no mistake, it _is_ a lost cause."

"That's not what President Kennedy told me."

"Jack was a charmer. He told you what you wanted to hear. I'm telling you the truth: this is how the game is played. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a meeting in five minutes with McNamara about this Vietnam situation. It's only my fourth headache of the day."

* * *

I managed to catch Robert Kelly outside the steps of the Capitol. He was flanked by assistants and walking quickly, thinking mostly of his hunger and of an excellent French restaurant just off the Mall.

"Senator Kelly!" I called.

He spotted me, and briefly his mind filled with terror. I promptly shut off my telepathy; he couldn't have sensed my presence in his mind, but even so I knew I shouldn't give these people any more reason to fear me. Although afraid, he kept his composure. He did not run as I wheeled up to him.

I reached a hand out. "I keep calling, Senator, hoping you'll speak with me. I've gotten to know your secretary quite well. A lovely young woman, that Shirley. Very good at making excuses for you."

Senator Kelly forced a smile and shook my hand. "A little cold to be waiting outside today, isn't it, Professor?"

"You'll have to forgive me; I have a bit of trouble with stairs." I smiled. "I would have liked to go inside and speak before the Senate, but well..."

"I'm sorry things didn't work out," he said. He tipped his hat. "If you'll excuse me, I've got less than an hour for lunch. My girl will set up an appointment with you at a later date."

"I could join you, if you don't mind. I'm quite hungry myself."

He cringed. "Some other time, I'm sure."

"I'm sure."

I watched him head off down the street. A flash of red caught my eye; a young redheaded woman in a red coat raced toward him with papers spilling out of her hands.

"I am so, so sorry, Senator! I have those letters you asked for right here."

"Heck, Miss Smith, you're only an hour late."

"I'm sorry. Please don't fire me. There was a..." She looked in my direction and turned pale. "Oh my God, is that—"

"It certainly is. I was just talking to him. He cornered me, I'm afraid."

"You didn't _touch_ him, did you, sir?"

"I shook his hand, that's all."

"Never shake a Mutant's hand," she said as they turned the corner. "You never know what tricks they might have up their sleeve."

* * *

"He has a point," Max said. "We _are_ dangerous. We could probably take over the world if we wanted to."

We hunched over the chessboard in my study for our weekly game.

"But we don't want to," I said.

"But we could. And they know it. We permit them to exist out of the goodness of our hearts. And you tell them, 'But our hearts are _so very_ good!' like that matters at all. They know we can always change our minds."

I sent a pawn towards his queen. "Everybody is dangerous under the right circumstances. Some men are stronger than others, some nations have more powerful weapons than others. It's a difference of degree, not kind."

"Quite a high degree of difference, though."

"Nevertheless."

He captured my pawn. "So your gift is merely a natural extension of empathy and persuasive skills, you might say?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"And yet you won't use that gift." He smashed his cigarette butt into the ashtray. "You let those filmmakers walk out of here with their ignorance and hatred intact. You let Johnson and Senator Kelly and half of Congress brush you off. You could have changed their minds. You could kill this bill with a thought. You call it a gift, but you never open it."

"If I were to use my telepathy to alter peoples' thoughts, it would only prove Kelly's point. Nobody would ever trust Mutants again."

"So melodramatic. It doesn't matter what you do. They don't trust us _now_."

"Of course not. We must _build_ trust, show them we deserve it."

"I had many friends, family too, who made that argument. Just follow the rules, be good, show them we're not as bad as they say..." He captured my rook.

"Max..." I puffed nervously on my pipe.

"Do you know what happened to them?"

"Yes."

"They went up the chimneys."

"Yes."

"All of them."

"I know, Max," I said quietly.

"There were others who warned that they would not stop at kicking us out of the universities, at shutting down our businesses." He captured another rook. "With each step, some fought back and some fled and the others did not listen. They were complacent. 'It can't be as bad as you're saying. Why would they kill us all? Their own neighbors?' If we had all joined together in rebellion, in the beginning..."

"I don't disagree that violent resistance is sometimes justified, in extreme circumstances. But how does one know _when_ circumstances will become extreme?"

"We're on our way now. I know, I can feel it."

"Can you?"

"Yes."

"And what would you do about it?" I asked.

"The same thing I should have done in 1933: pack up my family and leave the country."

"And abandon this school that you yourself helped found? Abandon these children?"

"They may come too. It would be nothing for Pietro to smuggle any Mutant in trouble across national boundaries, faster than any border guard could catch him."

"And where would you go? What country can you guarantee wouldn't eventually pass a law like this one?"

For a moment he was silent, except for the tapping of his foot against the floor. "We could instead make our stand here, of course. I was merely suggesting the course of action I thought you would prefer."

"I don't want to leave the country. We deserve to be here as much as any of them. But I don't believe violent insurrection would help anything. In fact, it would make it worse."

"So you say, but I don't see you doing anything to make it better."

"Some of the students want to get involved."

"I know," Max said. He captured another pawn. "They're young and foolish."

"They're sympathetic. If people were to see these bright young men and women, how they've learned control over their gifts, how similar they are to their own children... we could change many more minds. We've kept them out of the public eye, and perhaps that's what's held us back."

"They're not your child soldiers, Charles."

"Now who's being melodramatic?"

"I only mean to say that they're too young to be placed in that kind of danger. To be political symbols, to be targets for anyone who hates Mutants. If anybody's going to make that sacrifice for future generations, it should be us old men, not them. Look at Scott; look at how he's suffered from being in the public eye." He captured another pawn.

"Scott's a strong young man," I said. "Stronger than he knows. It would benefit the public to see what a responsible, good-hearted boy he is — and it would certainly benefit him to have a rehabilitated public image."

"So you'd throw him to the wolves in the hope that they've lost their taste for lamb."

"I would never ask him to do anything he didn't want to do."

"He's a fatherless child who imprinted on you like a duckling. Whatever you ask him to do is what he wants to do."

"First he's a lamb, now he's a duckling. Funny, because I thought he was a young man. You're thinking like a father, not a teacher. The point of this whole exercise is for them to grow up into adults who can take care of themselves."

"Oh, is that the point? I was wondering."

"Well, why do you think we founded this school in the first place?"

"To protect them!" he exploded. "From a world that hates and fears them!"

"And what do they do when we're no longer there to protect them? Who's going to change that world, take away its hate and fear, if not these children?"

"Who says anybody can do that? Who says it's even possible?"

"Goldwater's on our side."

"Goldwater's a lunatic. Here's the difference between you and me, Charles: You want to change the world for future generations of Mutants. I want to protect the Mutants who are already here." He captured my bishop.

"You can't see the forest for the trees."

"At least I recognize that there _are_ trees."

"Checkmate," I said.

Max stared down at the board in shock. " _Gott verdammt_ ," he murmured.

"Good game, my friend," I said, pulling away from the table. "Good game."


	12. Silver Dagger

**12\. Silver Dagger**

 **Wanda**

"Okay, how does this sound?" Warren clears his throat and holds the letter out in front of him. "To Whom It May Concern—"

I hold my hand out. "You should address it to Representative Diggs. That's who you want to read it, isn't it?"

"He probably isn't going to read it, though. Not personally," Warren says. "His secretary might read it and tell him he got a letter from some Black Mutant kid, but that's it. Plus, 'To Whom It May Concern' sounds fancier."

"He may never read it, but you've got to write the letter like he _will_ ," I say. "That's how these things work."

"How would you know?"

"I know things," I say. "Look, just address it to him. It's more specific. He'll know you wrote the letter just for him. 'To Whom It May Concern' sounds like you're just writing letters to all the representatives and you don't even know who most of them are."

Warren looks down at the pile of letters on the table. "But that's exactly what we're doing."

"Yes, but we don't want _them_ to know that." I show him the side of my left pinky finger, smeared with ink. "See, this is why I'm handwriting all my letters. It shows them that I care a lot, and so should they."

"And is that also why you're dotting your i's with little hearts?"

I grin. "No, _that's_ to show them that I'm a sweet young girl who doesn't deserve to be treated like a criminal."

"You're pretty devious, Wanda Eisenhardt."

"And don't you forget it."

"Done," Pietro says. He dumps a stack of letters in front of me.

I leaf through them. "They're all different, right?"

"Of course they're all different," he huffs. "I even did a little reading on each of their districts. You got any idea how hard it is to make corn relevant to Mutant registration? Because that's all these Iowa bastards care about."

"That's some smart work, Pietro," I say.

"Good, 'cause I'm bored now. I guess I'll go deliver these." And in a fraction of a second, he's snatched the letters out of my hand; thrown on his coat, hat, and gloves; and whooshed out the door.

"Did he put stamps on those?" Warren asks.

I shrug and look out through the frosted window at the scene outside. The yard is blanketed with glittering snow and it's enough to make teen-agers act like toddlers. Everybody's building snowmen and throwing snowballs at each other. Everybody but me and Warren, I guess. And Lorna, apparently, since I can't see her anywhere.

"Hey, have you seen Lorna around?" I ask Warren.

He shakes his head. "What do you know about Michigan?"

"It looks like a mitten and it's real cold," I say, rubbing my aching hand. "And it has a lot of lakes, I think. Or is that Minnesota?"

"I think it's Minnesota." He presses his pen to his lips in thought, leaving a little blue dot. That can't be good for him, but it's sort of sweet.

I stand up. "I'm going to give my hand a rest and see if I can't find my sister."

"While you're up, can you get me a Pepsi?"

"Sure."

I find her in her room, lying in bed reading _Mad_ magazine. She looks about the glummest a person could be while reading _Mad_.

"Hey, why aren't you outside?" I ask.

"Bobby's outside," she says without looking up.

"Yeah, I know. I kind of thought he was your boyfriend."

Lorna squints and tightens her face. She does that when she's starting to tear up and doesn't want anyone to notice. "I don't know if he's my boyfriend or not. He doesn't talk to me anymore, and when I try to talk to him, he just turns around and walks the other way. Or he pretends to be busy."

I look out Lorna's window; below, Bobby is building some sort of ice fort with Morty. Morty's just packing snow, but Bobby's really reveling in his gift. He's shooting ice out his hands to cover the walls of the fort. It looks like a palace, with towers and gates and a drawbridge that Bobby opens and closes by gesturing to it. I knew he could frost over, but I've never seem him do anything like that. Both boys are laughing and everybody's admiring their work, and they look like they're having quite a time while Lorna's up in her room feeling crumby. That rotten Bobby Drake. I ball my hands into fists and start out the door.

"Wanda, don't say anything to him, please," Lorna begs. "Promise me you won't."

I pause in the doorway. "I promise I won't say a word."

And I don't. I really don't. I just march right outside, clear across the lawn to where Bobby's building his ridiculous little ice palace. And all I do is think about the statistical probability that all the molecules in that ice fort blast apart. And I point at it, and out of my hand comes a flash of red, and the fort explodes with such force that it almost knocks me on my back.

I'm as shocked as anyone else. I didn't know I could do that. But everyone's looking at me, so I pretend I knew that was going to happen and I glare at Bobby.

"What'd you do _that_ for?" he demands.

"You know why," I say, and turn around and go back inside.

"No, I don't!" Bobby shouts after me. He follows me into the hall and grabs me by the arm. He's really determined to make me break my promise to Lorna.

"You're getting snow all over the rug," I tell him.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks.

"What's wrong with _you_?" I say, yanking my arm back. "Do you know where Lorna is? Upstairs, crying over _you_. If you don't want to go out with her anymore, be a man about it and tell her. At least before you leave forever. Let her forget you."

Bobby's face turns red. "I didn't want to hurt her."

"Well, you're hurting her now. Go tell her the truth, and then you can rebuild your stupid ice fort."

I wait until he's started up the stairs before I go back into the dining room.

Warren looks up at me from the typewriter. "Do I want to know what that was about?"

I slump down in the chair across from him and scowl. "I just told my sister's lousy boyfriend to dump her. But _only_ because he's dumped her already, basically, just without telling her."

"You sure you should've done that?"

"She's miserable, Warren! She'll feel better knowing where she stands. I know I would." I take an envelope out of the box and start addressing it. "She ought to find a better boyfriend. She can do that now that she's single again."

"Where's she going to find another boyfriend?" Warren asks. "Morty's the only other boy her age here, and... well..."

"She doesn't have to date someone _here_ ," I say.

"We're in the middle of nowhere and she has green hair," Warren points out. "I'm not so sure about her chances. Not that she isn't nice."

"How many representatives have we got left?" I ask abruptly.

Warren looks through the list. "Fifty or so?"

I sigh. "Okay. Let's get on it. No more distractions."

Just then, I hear Bobby slowly coming back down the stairs. He lingers in the doorway. "I did it," he says quietly, looking at the floor.

"How'd she take it?" I ask.

"She's crying."

"You should go up and talk to her," Warren tells me.

Bobby sits down beside Warren. "I hate this," he says.

"Good. It's your fault." I go back up to Lorna's room. Just as Bobby said, she's crying. I sit myself down on the edge of her bed.

"For the record, Bobby Drake is a rat and you can do about a thousand times better," I tell her.

"What's wrong with me?" she sobs.

"Nothing's wrong with you."

"Is it my hair? Do I look too obvious? Maybe he was ashamed to be seen with me..."

"If he was, he's even lousier than I thought he was, and that's saying something." I reach out to hug her. To my surprise, she lets me. And for a minute, it's like it was before Mom died.

"Hey," I say gently. "The semester's almost over. And I don't think he's coming back to school, so you'll never have to see him again."

"He isn't coming back?"

"I don't think so. His parents haven't sent in his tuition payment, and it's past the deadline."

That only makes her cry harder.

"Lorna, honey, he's only a stupid boy. They're a dime a dozen. And most of them have body temperatures above 30 degrees."

"That's easy for you to say. You've never had a boyfriend. You don't know how this feels."

I stiffen.

"Sorry, I didn't mean — oh, Wanda, I shouldn't have said anything."

"No, all you said was the truth. It's fine. Boys are overrated."

Lorna pulls away from me, sniffling and drying her eyes with a tissue. She left a big wet spot on my sweater. "You're right, they are. I don't have to have a boyfriend."

"No, you don't."

"He never really liked me anyway. I don't think. I always got the feeling he was only going out with me to be polite or something."

I squeeze her shoulder. "And aren't you glad you don't have to put up with that anymore?"

"I guess." She crumples her tissue into a tight little wad and looks down at her hands as she rolls it tighter and tighter. "You can go now. I sort of want to be alone."

I kiss her on the forehead and close the door behind me on the way out. When I get back to the dining room, Bobby's still there.

"I'm coming back next semester," he says. "I've decided."

I freeze in the hallway. "What."

"I convinced him," Warren says, standing up. He leads me into the kitchen. I think he knows I'm getting ready to do some yelling.

"Do you know what condition Lorna's in?" I hiss.

"Bobby's in the same condition. Look, Wanda, there's few enough of us as there is. We have to stick together, us Mutants, especially now. And Bobby's learning so much here. He's controlling his gift, even making ice and snow out of nothing, and... and making it into something! He couldn't do that when he got here. What else do you suppose he could do?"

"It's going to break Lorna's heart to see him everyday. There's no place to hide here, no way to avoid him."

"It breaks _my_ heart everyday to see Jean running around with Scott," Warren says quietly. "But I'm not leaving. And anyway, Bobby's the best friend I have here."

He's standing very close to me, close enough that I can feel his warmth. I look at the dot of blue ink on his lips and wonder if it would rub off if I kissed him. But that's a stupid thought.

Of course at that moment, Pietro comes whirling into the room.

"You did put stamps on those letters before you sent them, didn't you?" Warren asks.

Pietro blinks at him. "Stamps? Why would I need stamps?"

"To... to mail them."

"What? I didn't mail them, I just went to their offices in Washington and hand-delivered them. Are you done yet?"

Warren and I shake our heads. Pietro rolls his eyes and in another flash, he's gone.

"I'm not feeling well," I tell Warren. "I'm going to finish the rest of my letters some other time." I brush past him out of the room. "Oh! I forgot your Pepsi."

He waves me off. "Forget about it. Feel better."

I won't.

The door to Lorna's room is still closed. I step into my room and close my door as well. Hidden away, down at the bottom of my closet, is the Christmas present I've been working on for Warren. I pull it out. It's an Avenging Angel costume — "for when the Avenging Angel flies again," the card reads. It's made of stretchy fabric, for aerodynamics and because I don't know what size he is exactly. And a new mask that matches the rest of the outfit. It's black and yellow and has a halo on it and everything. It's much nicer than what he used to wear, which was just street clothes with a mask, really. It's full of pins and I still need to do some work on the legs. I'm running out of time to give it to him.

Maybe I won't give it to him at all.

It was a stupid idea.


	13. Washington Square

**13\. Washington Square**

 **Hank**

Bobby is pacing back and forth and it's really quite irritating. I wish he'd do that somewhere else. To be honest, I could also read somewhere else; nothing's keeping me in the living room but for Pietro's annoying habit of setting his record player to the fastest possible speed and then blasting the sped-up records at full volume. I'll take Bobby's pacing over that any day.

"I'm jumping out of my skin," Bobby says. "I mean it. I've got cabin fever, I think. How can you sit there reading? It's a hothouse in here. And when it isn't too hot, it's too cold. There's never any middle ground."

"Look who just discovered temperature," I say. "Sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold. That's how it is for the rest of us, Bobby. You'll get used to it."

"It's not only the temperature, it's also, well, it's just _cramped_ in here, you know? It's Friday night! Or it'll be Friday night in a couple of hours, at least! It's Valentine's Day! Shouldn't we be out doing something?"

"Bobby, I assure you, nobody in this house is out doing anything for Valentine's Day except Scott and Jean. Don't worry, we're all lonely and frustrated."

Just then, Warren comes bounding down the stairs in a veritable cloud of Aqua Velva. He's wearing a nice sport coat with holes cut in the back for his wings.

"I stand corrected," I say, holding my page with my thumb.

Bobby pokes his head into the hall. "Hey, Warren! Wanna go down to Greenwich Village with me? There's this new coffee shop just opened up down there called Café Au Go Go. It's real cool. Nobody knows about it yet, but I stumbled on it last week, right after they opened up. We've got to take advantage before it starts filling up with phonies. Some pretty waitresses there, too. How about it?"

"The Village?" Warren says. "Why would you want to go there? Nothing but beatniks and faggots down there. Besides, I've got a date tonight."

"Now how in the world did you manage to meet a girl all the way out here?" I ask.

"I didn't meet her, I already knew her. Her name's Candy. She's an old family friend from way back. In fact, I escorted her to a Links cotillion the summer before last. I don't normally see her much during the school year; she goes to Northfield School for Girls, up in Massachusetts. It's very far away from my old boarding school, but not too bad a drive from here."

"Well, have fun with your debutante," I say. "And put in a good word for us with those Northfield girls!"

"I'll do my best. See y'all later," Warren says, and glides right out the door.

"This Candy of his must know about his... well..." I lean forward on the couch and motion to my back. "Otherwise I expect he'd wear his harness. Though how he could manage to hide them under that sport coat, I can't imagine. He could barely hide them under a trench coat." I look up at Bobby. He is frozen in place, pale, looking at the front door with a sickly expression. "Bobby? Are you all right?"

"Fine," he says quietly. He shakes his head. "Fine, I'm fine." He looks like he might cry.

I stand up. "You know what? Why don't we go to that coffee shop, the two of us? A couple of hip young bachelors, out on the town! There have got to be some nice girls in the same boat we are, all alone on Valentine's Day. And Bobby, you say the waitresses there are pretty?"

"What? Oh, yeah... you don't have to go, though. It's... maybe I'll just stay in."

"Nonsense. You're not the only one with cabin fever. Come on, I'll pay for the train tickets."

"It's fine, Hank, really it is," Bobby insists. "See, now I'm thinking I might go up to my room and get started on that math homework."

I press my palm to Bobby's forehead. "Funny... you don't _feel_ hot. Not that you ever feel hot, exactly. But you're clearly not well."

"Ha ha."

"Math homework on a Friday night? _Any_ homework on a weekend, before Sunday night?"

"I'm trying out being responsible," Bobby says. "The teachers are loving it. And if you try to talk me out of it, I have the feeling Mr. Eisenhardt will be pretty sore with you."

"You know what helps with math homework?" I ask, pulling my coat on.

"What?"

"Coffee. Let's go."

* * *

"You ever been to Washington Square Park?" Bobby asks.

"Not before now," I say.

"It's pretty wild."

As we get closer, I see what he means. It's cold and getting colder as the sun dips below the horizon, but even so the park is full of hipsters, talking and laughing and smoking — and not just tobacco, by the smell of it. Would-be Bob Dylans are strumming their guitars; we drop some change in the open cases of a few as we pass. Young lovers stroll past, holding hands.

"How much farther to the coffee shop?" I ask.

"Not much. Just a couple blocks down, over on Bleecker Street. It's in a sort of basement."

"You must come down here a lot, to be so up-to-date on all the cool coffee shops and such."

"Since I got my license?" Bobby surveys the park wistfully. "Every chance I get."

A group of seven half-drunk men — college boys, most likely — wander towards us, laughing and shouting. As they pass, one of them knocks his shoulder against Bobby's. And Bobby, well, it must be a nervous reaction because he's been doing so well with his gift lately, but he ices up. Just his shoulder — and the man's. Even in his state, the man notices and turns around.

"Wha' the..." he murmurs, brushing the frost off the shoulder of his brown jacket. He stares at Bobby in confusion, and Bobby ices up the rest of the way. "Holy hell... it's a damn mutie."

None of the men look terribly rough, but there are more of them than there are of us, and they're not in their right minds. I couldn't beat them all, but I could beat more than Bobby could. And I can scare them.

I step in front of Bobby, puffing my chest out. "I've got news for you gentlemen," I say. "I'm a Mutant too. If you've got a problem with my friend here, you've got a problem with me."

"I should've known by your hands," one of the men says. His coat is blue. "You think we'll just let you do whatever you want because you're a Mutant? Well, I'm not afraid of you. Gimme your worst. Hit me, blast me, make me think I'm a chicken. I'm not about to be intimidated by a tool of the military-industrial complex."

"What are you talking about?" Bobby snaps.

"Where are you from?" Blue Coat asks me.

"I hardly see what relevance that –"

"I said. _Where_. Are you _from_."

"Dundee, Illinois."

"Where are you really from? Where were you _born_?"

I grimace. Why should I tell him? Why should I give him the satisfaction? On the other hand, why shouldn't I tell him? I have nothing to be ashamed of.

"Los Alamos, New Mexico," I say.

Blue Coat nods smugly. "That's what I thought. Your dad must be proud of all those Japanese babies he killed."

"He's proud he helped end the war, saving many more lives."

They all laugh. "Yeah, he's a real hero, all right," one of them sneers. "Leveled two cities because Uncle Sam told him to."

"Hirohito wouldn't have stopped without it," I say, somewhat weakly.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night. No, but it's great. Your dad and the rest of those bastards, they get to be remembered as heroes. They get to save the world and get all the glory, and we're the ones who got to live with the consequences of their big idea. We got to grow up ducking under desks and wondering if the world was gonna blow up tomorrow because Khrushchev got up on the wrong side of the bed." He looks me straight in the eye. He is not as drunk as I thought he was. "Wondering if some mutie in a bad mood will blast us to death for looking at him funny."

I clench my fists and my teeth, but don't respond. People are gathering, watching, surrounding us. I mustn't let this escalate into the fight they're all waiting for. I must be the bigger man, if only to show them that he's wrong about us.

Bobby, however, has no such compunctions. A great lump of snow lifts itself off the ground and starts sculpting itself into the shape of a nuclear missile. "Is this what you're afraid of?" Bobby asks, and shoots the snow missile at Blue Coat's head.

There are a few scattered laughs, but mostly gasps. Blue Coat and his friends are not among the small number who are amused.

"You've got some nerve," Brown Jacket says.

Four of them charge me. "Bobby, get out of here!" I shout. "I'll hold them off for as long as I can!"

I wrestle with the four who ran at me, but the other three are going after Bobby. A wall of ice shoots up in front of them. They dash around it, but I see Bobby surround himself in a tunnel of ice that he closes off behind him as he runs. I'm momentarily shocked at Bobby's power, which gives one of the men the opportunity to punch me right in my solar plexus. I double over in agony, my vision going black.

They'll finish me off, then go after Bobby. It won't be hard; they'll only have to follow Bobby's ice tunnel. As my vision returns, I see them doing just that.

No. I won't let him get hurt. Not when it was my bright idea to drag him here in the first place.

I summon all my strength and bound over to them. I jump up, higher than I knew I could leap, higher than I thought a person _could_ leap, sailing clear over their heads. I land in front of them, turn around, and face them.

And I do what my football coach trained me to do: I stop them in their tracks. I imagine a line on the ground, and I defend that line with all my might. Oh, they get a few licks in, but I'm a brick wall. They tire out and run away. I don't follow them; I have no interest in fighting them, and no energy left besides. All I can do is look for Bobby.

* * *

We find each other back at Grand Central Station. Bobby was wise enough to stop making the ice tunnel once he got past the crowd — or maybe he just melted it behind him. In any case, his attackers eventually gave up just as my own did. It took a number of sharp turns down twisting alleys, though. By the time I finally find Bobby, slumped over on a bench in a waiting room, it's almost ten. In a few minutes, we'll have missed curfew.

I collapse on the bench beside him, sweaty and panting. "Are you all right?"

Bobby nods mutely.

"When does the next train to Croton Falls depart?" I ask.

"In about fifteen minutes."

"Wonderful." I lean my head against the bench and close my eyes.

"This was a real disaster, huh?"

"Yes, it was."

"We never even got to the coffee shop."

"We'll go again sometime, when there are fewer drunkards on the street," I say.

Bobby is silent for a moment. "Thank you," he finally says. "For defending me, I mean."

"What are friends for?"

"Are we friends?"

"Aren't we?" I ask, opening one eye. "I like to think we are."

"I didn't think I had any friends at this school."

"What? None? What about Warren? And Morty? And... well, not Lorna so much, but Warren and Morty!"

He swings his legs and looks up at the marble ceiling. "Sure. Forget I said anything."

* * *

By the time we pull up to the school, it's nearly eleven. The slamming of the car doors and the crunch of our boots on snow are agonizingly loud in the stillness. The lights are on in the living room and the hall. Dr. MacTaggert throws the door open as soon as we step out of the car.

"Oh boy, we're in for it now," Bobby says. But Dr. MacTaggert's face softens as we step closer and she sees my bruised and bloodied face.

"What in blazes happened to you?" she asks, ushering us inside.

"We ran into some bigots, that's what happened," Bobby says. "Hank held 'em off almost single-handedly."

Dr. MacTaggert sighs. "All right, go straight upstairs, the both of you. I expect you to be in bed in ten minutes. Hank, wash your face. We'll talk about this in the morning."

We trudge upstairs. Suddenly, a thought occurs to me.

"Bobby," I whisper. "Can you make me a snowball?"

"What? What do you want a snowball for?"

"I just want it. Please."

He cups his hands and squints in concentration. The air starts to feel drier. I suppose he must be pulling the moisture from the air, and cooling it. Soon all the little droplets of water turn to snowflakes and swirl around each other between his palms, like a galaxy forming. It forms a perfectly spherical snowball, which he hands me.

"Hope you like it."

I stick it in my coat pocket. "I do. Thank you."

"What are friends for? I guess." He smirks and heads into the bathroom.

I run back downstairs. "Dr. MacTaggert?"

She's still there, thankfully. "What is it, Hank?"

"Could I see David, before he goes to sleep?" I ask. "Please. It's important and it'll only take a moment."

She purses her lips. "All right," she says. "But just a moment."

We walk back to her lab.

"How are things going with the serum?" I ask. "It's been so long since you asked for my assistance."

"Honestly, Hank, I've hit a bit of a wall with it. I've got a prototype, but I've no way of knowing its efficacy without testing. My attempts to induce our sort of mutation into mice and rats have all been unsuccessful. And I certainly couldn't test it on human Mutant subjects. I'm rather flummoxed. I don't know when I'll be able to make any more progress."

She unlocks David's door. "He should still be awake. He's had such trouble sleeping lately. I'm going to bed. Lock up when you leave, please." She hands me the key and steps out of the lap.

I step into the little hallway and carefully close the outer door behind me before I knock on the inner door. The knocking helps him feel more in control. David opens the door.

"Hank McCoy! What's wrong with your face?" Every time I see him, he seems a bit more alert, a bit brighter. He's still somewhat childlike and strange, but I haven't seen him pace or rock in a few weeks.

"Hi, David. Hi, Zabu." The cat is snaking around David's feet. I lean down to scratch him behind the ears. "Don't worry about my face; I'll be fine. I got you something." I reach into my coat pocket and hand the quickly-melting snowball to David.

He laughs in shock, passing the snowball from one hand to the other like a hot potato. "Oh, boy! Oh — oh, wow, I'd forgot how cold it was. Oh wow, Hank McCoy, oh gosh..."

"The whole state's covered in it right now," I say, "but that one's a Bobby Drake original."

"Oh, it's dripping everywhere, oh wow... oh, it's so cold, Hank McCoy, my hands are red. I can't even feel them."

"You can put it in the sink if you like."

"No!" He clutches the snowball to his chest. "I want to feel the cold. I want to hold it till it melts." He presses the snowball to his nose. "Oh, Hank McCoy, do you remember — do you remember going outside and playing in the snow, how your nose would get all red and numb? And when you came back inside, you'd tingle? Remember building snowmen?"

A lump forms in my throat. "Yes, I do, David."

"When I get out of here, I'm going to build a snowman," he announces. "It'll be the nicest — and a snowcat, too! That's what I'll do." The snowball is almost melted away, a shine on his palms and a puddle on the metal floor. Zabu crouches down to lick it up.

"What if..." I hesitate to say it. "What if you don't get out in winter?"

David looks stricken.

"I suppose you could _wait_ until winter," I say quickly. "To build a snowman, that is. And there are so many fun things to do at other times of year."

He nods doubtfully, and looks at the water on his hands. "It melted so quickly."

"It's warm in here."

"Some things just aren't meant to last, I think."

"I — I suppose you're right."

"I ought to go to bed," he says.

"That's a good idea. I'll do the same." I turn to leave.

"Good night, Hank McCoy."

"Good night, David MacTaggert."

I lock both doors behind me and stand alone in the darkness of the lab.

She'd keep it in the refrigerator, to preserve it. I peek inside, cringing at the harsh light that pours out. Sure enough, there's a rack of four little vials. I pick one up and examine it. This could cure him. It could cure us all. And we'll never know unless it's tested. It will only sit in the refrigerator while the snow melts and David whiles away his life in that little metal room.

The vial looks so small, so delicate in my hands. My hands that are too big, too strong. I envelop the vial in my fist and close the refrigerator door. I take a syringe from the cabinet. I tuck them both in my pocket where the snowball was, still wet and cold.

And I shut off the last light and close the door.


	14. Our Day Will Come

**14\. Our Day Will Come**

 **Irene**

In approximately two minutes, Hank McCoy will inject himself with an untested, experimental serum designed to suppress or even reverse the physical manifestations of our mutation. It will, in fact, have the opposite effect. The syringe will fall to the floor, and shatter. He will collapse in unbearable pain. His screams will draw the residents of the school to the laboratory, where they will watch in horror and concern as a thick pelt of fur erupts from Hank's body, as his eyes turn yellow and his canine teeth extend into fangs and his fingernails harden and sharpen into claws. He will weep from the pain and the shame. His friends will help him to bed – gingerly, for fear of hurting him and for fear of what he has just made himself. Nurse Voght will examine and watch over him.

In approximately ten minutes, Charles Xavier will telepathically summon all of the faculty and staff members to his study for an emergency meeting. We will gather in robes, nightgowns, and pajamas. Renata and I have our snow boots on, for our walk across the lawn. We will leave dirty slush on the floor.

Moira will blame herself for leaving Hank alone in the lab. She will offer to take full responsibility, and suggest that she call his parents immediately to inform them of what has happened.

Charles will insist that no one call the parents; it is too sensitive, he will say, for a telephone call. He and Hank will fly back to Illinois to tell them in person at the next possible opportunity. The rest of the teachers will express bafflement as to why Charles would not want the McCoys to know as soon as possible. They do not yet know who is listening on the other end of the line. Only Charles and I know, and Charles never tells anyone anything, and I know that I will not say anything about it, either. So I do not.

In fact, in that meeting I will say ten words and ten words only. I will say them after Nurse Voght has assured us that Hank will be fine, that the serum seems only to have exaggerated his mutation. I will say them immediately after Moira explains that the serum appears to either accelerate the normal course of mutation or draw out secondary mutations that had previously lain dormant.

I will say those ten words quietly, almost under my breath, and only Max will hear them, as he will be sitting at my left. The words will be, "I wonder what would happen if a non-Mutant was injected?" Max will look at me, and his thoughts will start to turn. We will have many conversations, Max and Renata and I. But at this point, my words will only have stirred an idea. He will return his gaze to the front of the room, back to Charles, but his mind will be elsewhere.

In approximately twenty minutes, Hank will need comfort and find none. His friends will have gone to bed and his roommate, Pietro, will not know what to say to him. Hank will walk into the hall and pick up the receiver on the upstairs telephone. He will hear a click as the operator connects him to his parents, and another click shortly thereafter.

His parents will be quite upset, but they will eventually accept him. In that moment, though, they will only be upset. They will be upset at Charles and Moira and the strangeness of mutation and a changing world, but Hank will think that they are upset at him. Hank will cry, alone, in the second-floor hallway.

In approximately thirty minutes, the faculty meeting will end. Max will go upstairs to the boys' wing and find Hank returned to his bed. He will decide not to wake him; Charles will talk to him tomorrow morning about their impending trip back to Illinois.

 _Let him sleep,_ Max will think. But Hank will not be sleeping. He will be speaking telepathically with Jean Grey, who will assure him that he is not a monster. He will not believe her. She will not entirely believe herself.

Renata and I will walk back through the crisp winter night to our little cottage. She will wonder aloud how many vials of that serum remain, and if Moira will destroy them all now. I will tell her: three and no.

And here's where things get interesting.


	15. Soldier Boy

**15\. Soldier Boy**

 **Jean**

There's a knot in my stomach that just keeps tightening. It's still dark outside — not that that means much this time of year, but the darkness makes it feel earlier in the morning than it really is. Wanda and I have packed a picnic basket full of sandwiches and place it in the backseat of Professor Xavier's Rolls-Royce. We're taking two cars to D.C.; in the Rolls, Mr. Eisenhardt (who's driving), Professor Xavier, Scott, and me. In the other, Miss Daucourt, Bobby, and Jason. The professor won't say it, but we all know why we were picked: we're the most normal-looking ones.

"You should be going, not me," I tell Wanda. "You'd do so much better. You're confident, you're smart, you're passionate about politics… heck, you wrote most of my testimony for me."

She brushes some lint off my coat. "You know how my father is. Anyway, I'm sure you'll be great. You did a good job reading your testimony to me last night."

"You're not the House of Representatives. You're not a crowd of anti-Mutant protesters. You're not the evening news and a country full of people who've never seen a real live Mutant before."

"So pretend they're not," Wanda says. "Pretend you're back in your room practicing your testimony, and the real trip is tomorrow, and I'm the only one listening."

"I can't do that. I'll know I'm really at the Capitol."

"You're a telepath, aren't you? Doesn't that mean you can put visions in people's heads? Could you do that to yourself? Make it _look_ like you're back in your room?"

"You're thinking of Jason. My gift doesn't work like that."

"Well, sometimes we surprise ourselves. It's worth a shot."

I examine my reflection in the car window. I look well put together, respectable. It's quite a conservative look; my mother will certainly be happy with it when she sees me on television. I look like the kind of girl who could testify before Congress, and that helps me _feel_ more like that kind of girl.

"You look beautiful," I hear Scott say from behind me.

I turn around. Even in the dim light, he looks terribly handsome. His pea coat's unbuttoned to reveal a suit and tie underneath. "You always say that."

"You always do." He kisses me on the cheek, and I feel some of my nervousness dissipate.

"You don't look so bad yourself," I say.

"Well, you know… we're representing all Mutants, aren't we?"

I sigh. "Don't remind me. I've been making myself sick about it all morning."

"I was sick before," Scott admits. "About an hour ago."

"Oh, gosh! And you look so calm."

"I'm better now. Just a waste of a good breakfast."

Wanda reaches into the car and tosses Scott an apple from the picnic basket. "Don't faint on national TV," she tells him.

"I'll try not to." He polishes the apple on his coat and bites into it.

"I'm half-afraid _I_ might," I say. "I just think about all those people - the protesters and the congressmen and the reporters and everybody in Washington, and I just…" I close my eyes. "I don't want to know what they're thinking about me. And I'm not sure I can stop myself from hearing it."

Scott wraps his arm around me. "You've been doing so much better. With your exercises and everything... I'm sure you can keep your telepathy under control."

"I'm always 'doing so much better' until I'm not," I say.

"Well, you've just got to keep trying. You'll get it."

"No, you don't understand." I pull away from Scott. "I can't risk another incident, not there, not with all of America watching." I tug nervously at the fingers of my gloves. "Professor Xavier once told me he could block my telepathy, just temporarily, just until I got older and could control it better. Maybe… maybe he could give me that block now. Just for today. I don't know how else I can be sure that nothing will happen."

As soon as I say it, I feel his hurt. As always, he doesn't show it, but he's worried about his own gift. And he doesn't have the option of an on-off switch.

 _I'm sorry, Scott,_ I tell him privately.

 _You can do this, you know,_ he responds. _You're stronger than you think you are. All you have to do is not give up._

I feel the world around me start to soften and glow, like an old movie with vaseline on the camera lens. The gray winter sky shimmers and suddenly the horizon is alight with a glorious sunrise, pink and purple and orange. The snow on the ground — scattered patches on brown grass, old and crusty and dirty on top — thickens and whitens and sparkles like in a Christmas card. I try to look at Scott, but my eyes keep sliding off of him and onto Jason Wyngarde, who looks so dashing as he's leaning against the car…

"Stop it!" I scream, squeezing my eyes closed and grinding my knuckles into my forehead. "Leave me alone!"

I hear a loud crash and open my eyes. The world is as it was, dim and gray, and Jason is on the ground, rubbing his head.

"You looked nervous," he says. "I just wanted to make you feel better. You didn't have to throw me against a car."

Did I throw him against the car? I didn't mean to.

"Well, you clearly _didn't_ make her feel better, so why don't you take a hint and go someplace else?" Wanda says, rushing to my side.

"What's going on here?" The professor's coming out of the house.

"Oh, Professor… it's nothing," I say. "Can I speak to you in private?" I can feel Scott deflating next to me, but I won't be deterred. If my telekinesis can manifest on its own and hurt Jason like that, who knows what I could do in Washington?

"Of course, Jean." I follow the professor to the far side of the driveway, away from everyone else. "What did you want to talk with me about?"

"You once made me an offer, and I… I'd like to take you up on it. Not permanently, not even for very long. Just for today. For the testimony. For the protesters outside."

"I know it's frightening, Jean, but the police have promised to stop them if they try to hurt us. It's only a short walk past them up the Capitol steps, and once you're inside, you won't even know they're there."

"It's not what _they_ might do or say that I'm worried about," I tell him. "Please."

He looks at me very seriously. "I want you to know that I've noticed a marked improvement in your control over your gifts. But I understand why you don't want to take any chances today, and I think that's a very wise decision. Come here."

I step closer to him and lean down. He places his hands at my temples. He closes his eyes, and I close mine.

It's funny; you don't really notice how much work it is to keep others' thoughts away until suddenly you don't have to anymore. I just walk around with a head full of white noise. It's not usually unbearable, but it is persistent. It's like a television set showing nothing but static that I can look at or ignore but can never turn off. Now it's like Professor Xavier has reached into my mind and turned it off. Everything is clear, clearer than it's ever been.

"How is that?"

"Wonderful," I say, straightening up. "It's absolutely wonderful."

"You'll let me know if others' thoughts start to intrude?" he asks.

"Of course. Thank you, Professor."

He nods.

"Are we ready to go?" Mr. Eisenhardt steps out of the house. "We have to get on the road by eight at the latest."

"We're only waiting on Bobby now," Professor Xavier says. He closes his eyes and puts a finger to his temple. "He should be down in a moment."

"It's not too late to bring Wanda with us," I tell Mr. Eisenhardt. "It _was_ her letter that convinced Representative Griffiths to invite us to testify, after all."

"Unfortunately," Mr. Eisenhardt mutters. "No, Wanda will just have to stay here in this nice house where no one can kill her. It's a terrible burden, I know, but we all have to make sacrifices."

"And yet _you_ get to go," Wanda says, crossing her arms.

"I can't forbid children who aren't mine from risking their lives, but at the very least I can protect them if things get out of hand. Which they will."

Professor Xavier clucks his tongue as he wheels over to the Rolls. "Max, Max, Max. Always so pessimistic."

"You call it pessimism, I call it realism." Mr. Eisenhardt and Scott help the professor into the car's passenger seat. Scott folds up his wheelchair and tucks it in the trunk. "Don't think that because they're children, those protesters won't attack them. They don't see any of us as human."

"We're _not_ children," Wanda insists.

"Thinking you're not a child is more childish than anything," Mr. Eisenhardt says. He gets into the driver's seat and starts up the car. Scott and I hop into the backseat.

"It doesn't matter what the protesters think," the professor says. "They're likely beyond convincing; they're the ones devoted enough to their hate to brave the cold to terrorize some teen-agers. No, it's the cameras we're after. The cameras and all the people watching through them. And in that regard, the protesters are a blessing. When America sees these brave young people staring down bigotry with dignity and strength, it will stir their consciences."

"That assumes that they _have_ consciences."

"Everyone has a conscience. Even when blinded by ignorance and hate, it remains — even if you have to dig for it." He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. "Jean, have I ever told you how I got in this wheelchair?"

" _Gott im Himmel_ …" Mr. Eisenhardt says to himself. "What's Ren waiting for, anyway?"

"No, you haven't," I say.

"It was late in the war, on a little island in the South Pacific," Professor Xavier says. "I was alone on a scouting mission, and as I was creeping through the jungle, I felt a bullet hit me right in the spine. I collapsed on the ground. The pain was agonizing, but I gripped my rifle and looked around for the Japanese soldier who had hit me. He came out of the bushes presently, and ran towards me. He was alone as well, it seemed, and I suppose he had orders to make sure I was really dead, and if not, to put me out of my misery. He didn't. He saw my face, you see, how scared I was, how much pain I was in. And I saw his face, and he looked as scared and hungry and filthy and tired as myself. And young — we were both so young. Not much older than you two. I had my rifle at the ready, but I didn't shoot him. And he just stared at me for what felt like hours. Finally he raised his rifle, and I closed my eyes, and I heard a gunshot but I didn't feel any pain. All I felt was some bits of palm tree bark falling on my head. When I opened my eyes, I saw Japanese soldier's back as he ran away.

"My sergeant found me a little later. They carried me away on a stretcher, and I caught a glimpse of the palm tree I was lying under. It had a bullet hole in it. They sent me home with a Purple Heart. I never walked again, but I was alive. Every day of my life since then has been a gift from that young man. I often think of him. He must have been told so many horrible things about Americans. Years of propaganda trained him to hate us, to see us as less than human, and yet in that moment he saw the humanity in me and could not bear to take my life. I sometimes wonder who he was, and if he made it out of the war alive. I hope he did.

"Some years later, after I finished my doctorate, the U.S. Army contacted me. Someone had done a study, apparently, and found that only 25% of soldiers in World War II fired their weapons at the enemy. Most shot over the enemies' heads or not at all. Well, the Army considered this a grave problem and started recruiting psychologists to develop a training program that would get future soldiers to overcome their natural aversion to murdering their fellow man. The Army wanted me to help work on this program. I told them no, of course. I told them I owed my life to this phenomenon and would have no part in stamping it out. Not that it made much of a difference. They found other psychologists." Professor Xavier looks wistfully through the fogged-up car window as our car follows Miss Daucourt's down the driveway. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling."

"Don't apologize," I say. "It's a good story. I'm glad you told me."

"Not everyone in the war had such a — how did you say? — 'natural aversion to murdering their fellow man,' " Mr. Eisenhardt says.

"I believe they did, Max," the professor replies. "But they found ways to overcome it. I might share your opinion of what lies before us now if I didn't believe that, but we're not teaching anyone anything new. We're only reminding them of who they've always truly been."

* * *

We pull into the southern entrance of the Capitol and there they are, lining both sides of our path to the House with their placards, most of them reading, "Remember the St. James Six." I ball my hands into fists. Scott is the only person here who doesn't need to be reminded; none of those hateful people remember the St. James Six. Those kids are just a political slogan to them. I turn to Scott, sure that he must be terribly sad, but if anything, he looks calmer than I feel. His face is inscrutable, emotionless, a blank wall without any windows.

I keep my eyes on the protesters as the guard at the gatehouse lets us through, craning my neck to see them as Mr. Eisenhardt finds us a parking space. There's a big crowd of them, all bundled up against the cold. They start shouting louder when they see us coming and their breath makes little clouds in the air. In front of them, police officers on horseback. Behind them, the flash of cameras. Between all of this, we prepare to walk.

 _Hold your heads high,_ Professor Xavier tells us. _If they shout at you, do not respond. If they attack you, do not respond. And whatever you do, do not use your gifts. They are only afraid of you. Don't give them reason to be afraid._

"What should we do if one of them confronts us personally?" Scott asks. "If we can't avoid talking to them?"

 _Be polite. Introduce yourself. Ask him what his name is. Show him that you mean him no harm. They won't be expecting that._

I know the professor just told us to hold our heads high, but I can't. The protesters are chanting, "Muties go home!" I tuck my chin into the collar of my coat, keep my eyes focused on the stairs leading up to the House, and walk as steadily as I can through the roar. I reach one trembling hand out, and Scott grips it in his own. My parents won't like seeing that on the news, but he steadies me. White-knuckled, we steady each other.

"Murderer!" someone shouts.

I hear the rock whizzing through the air before I see it. In an instant, Scott is doubled over, his glasses skidding across the plaza. I grab him and drop with him to the ground. His right temple is bleeding, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Scott, your face…"

"Where are my glasses?"

I dash towards where I last saw the glasses. They went past the police officers. Protesters are stomping on them.

"You're a bunch of hypocrites!" Bobby shouts back. "You call him a murderer, then you destroy his glasses? Those are the only things—"

I clamp my hand over Bobby's mouth. "Don't remind them!" I hiss. "Remember what the professor said?"

"What's happening?" Scott is kneeling on the ground, cradling his head.

I take off my scarf and wrap it around his eyes. "You're showing them who you truly are," I tell him, helping him to his feet.

"We have to get inside," Scott says. "Now."

The protesters are pushing in closer, yelling louder. I spin around, looking in every direction. I see no sign of Miss Daucourt, or Mr. Eisenhardt. The crowd is getting dangerously rowdy, and the police are just standing there. Just then someone bumps into me hard, almost knocking me over — a redhead in a red coat in some big hurry to get somewhere.

"Hey, watch it!" I snap.

She freezes in place and turns around to look at me. As soon as she sees my face, she steps back, shaky gasps sputtering out of her open mouth. She seems instantly to know she's made a mistake. She has angered a Mutant. She stares at me with eyes wide and filling with tears.

I sigh, remembering what Professor Xavier told me. "I... I'm sorry if I frightened you. My name is Jean Grey. What's your name?"

The woman hesitates. Finally, in a voice that sounds like a sob, she says, "Rachel."

"That's a pretty name. Look, please believe me, you don't have to be afraid. I'm not going to kill you just for bumping into me."

She smiles or maybe smirks or maybe just grimaces, and without another word, spins around and keeps running past me, up the steps to the House, where Senator Kelly is shaking a man's hand.


	16. She's Not There

**16\. She's Not There**

 **Renata**

I was a man in a gray flannel suit. My skin was white but not too pale — not _Irish_ pale — my eyes and hair brown, my height and build perfectly average, my face not particularly attractive but not particularly ugly, either. I was anonymous, invisible, perfectly forgettable.

I wove my way through the increasingly angry crowd with my head held high, towards the stairs to the south entrance of the Capitol building. It's amazing what people will let you get away with if you only look like you know what you're doing. I strode confidently up the steps where Senator Robert Kelly and Representative Martha Griffiths were standing. They looked fairly alarmed at the scene below them. I took one quick glance back into the crowd; Max was there at a safe distance, watching me. Waiting.

"Senator Kelly," I said in a smooth baritone. "I'm sorry to bother you, but, well, I just admire you so much. May I shake your hand?"

"Uh, certainly, Mr. …" He reached a hand out. I gripped it tightly enough to make the veins of his arms bulge a little. From out of my sleeve the syringe I had taken from Moira's lab floated as if by magic.

"What — what is this? Who are you?" Senator Kelly struggled to free himself from my grasp, but I held on strong.

With my right hand still clutching the senator's, my left hand pushed his sleeve up his arm, breaking the buttons on his cuff, until I could see the pale blue of his cephalic vein. Max could not see it, but he could sense the metal. I tried to guide the syringe to the proper place, but Kelly kept trying to yank his arm away. Aides ran to his side. Representative Griffiths had run to find a police officer. I was running out of time.

"Step back!" I heard a man shout.

I felt a man grab me from behind, twisting my left arm behind my back. Someone else tried to pull Kelly back. The needle quivered in air, fumbling over Kelly's shaking arm. At last, it hovered over the cephalic vein. I wrested my left arm free and tapped the side of the syringe. Max would feel the vibration.

"Now, dammit," I growled under my breath, knowing Max couldn't hear me. Miraculously, the needle found its way in and emptied itself of the serum.

I released the senator's arm and slammed the back of my head into the nose of the man behind me. He released me and staggered back.

A red-haired woman in a red coat raced up to the landing in a panic. "NO!" she shrieked, catching Senator Kelly as he slid limply into her arms. She looked up at me then, her eyes filled with tears and rage. "You have no idea what you've just done," she said.

I smirked at her, spun around, and sprinted back down the steps, slipping past the crowd that had gathered. As I muscled my way through the protesters, I took my change in stages. First, my eyes became blue. Then my skin paled, and my hair lightened gradually into blond. Then I tossed my fedora on the ground. Finally, my suit darkened into black. Any one person in the crowd would not notice the change, but by the time I had located an appropriately shadowy alcove near the steps, I looked completely unlike any description of the man who had attacked Senator Kelly.

A blond man in a black suit ducked into the alcove. A dark-haired woman in a white dress walked back out. I slipped back into the ruckus until I found Max again. He was arguing with Charles near the entrance to the parking lot.

"We've got to get the children out of here," Max said. "It isn't safe."

"He's right, Charles," I said. "Something just happened to Senator Kelly; I don't think they'll be voting on the MRA today. Let's get out of here before they really start attacking us."

Charles looked at me quizzically. I could feel him trying to pry into my mind. He never could get in. "Where were you just now, Renata?"

"Trying to make a path for the students. It's hopeless; the protesters are out of control. Call the kids back, Charles. Do it now."

He placed a finger to his temple, and presently I heard his voice ring out: _All students please return to the cars at once. We're going back to the school._

Max grabbed my hand. "We can't trust that they can make it back on their own. Ren, we've got to find them."

"They've been separated from each other," Charles said. "Scott and Jean are roughly 30 paces in that direction; Bobby and Jason are back this way. The mob is closing in."

Over the roar of the protesters, I heard a bottle break. All three of our heads turned in that direction.

"Scott." The name caught in Charles' throat.

"We'll find him," I said. Max and I elbowed our way through the crowd, ignoring the slurs and ducking the blows.

"There!" Max shouted, pointing. I spun around; Scott and Jean were crouched on the ground, surrounded by angry protesters who somehow could not get near them. Scott's glasses were gone, his eyes held closed by Jean's scarf. Jean's own eyes were closed in deep concentration; I realized that she was creating a psychic bubble around the two of them. Shards of glass sprinkled the ground nearby; the bottle hurled at them had not reached its target.

"On my count," I said to Max, "I'll shout their names, get Jean to drop the bubble and come to us. You run interference."

"Run what?"

"It… it means keep the crowd away from them." I fixed my eyes on the kids. "On the count of three. One… two…"

Just then, an enormous pair of wings shaded the plaza. A figure in black and yellow swooped down. "Scott! Jean!" he shouted, hovering above them.

"Warren?" Max said.

He was masked, but there was no mistaking him. The psychic bubble fell as Jean looked up in astonishment. The crowd closed in. Warren dove down, trying to pick up one kid in each arm, but they were too heavy. I shoved my way through the press of people, trying to get to them.

"Take Jean!" I shouted. "We'll get Scott!"

Warren seemed to hear me, because he took Jean in his arms and flapped back up into the sky, his white wings gleaming in the sun. It was a remarkable sight, but I had no time to admire it. Scott was curled up on the ground; a man was kicking him viciously in the ribs. Max pulled the man off of him and pulled Scott to his feet.

"Can you run?" he asked.

"I think so," Scott said.

I spun around to clear a way for them - and almost walked right into a pair of kicking hooves. A loud whinny pierced the air as the horse reared up in front of me. At least fifty police officers on horseback galloped through the plaza, sending protesters scurrying in terror and creating a wall between the protesters and the students.

"Attention!" one shouted into a megaphone. "Disperse!"

It made no sense. There were far more officers here than had been on duty before; a large number seemed to appear out of nowhere, and now they were endangering citizens' lives. To defend a couple of Mutants.

Or were we the ones they wanted to disperse?

"Attention! Disperse! Attention! Disperse!"

We looked every which way, but every place we turned there were more police on more horses.

We were completely surrounded.


	17. Alabama

**17\. Alabama**

 **Warren**

"Turn that stuff off, would you?" I say to Wanda. "It's no good watching it."

Wanda's sitting on the floor in front of the TV, watching our classmates live from Washington. "Don't you want to know how they're doing?" Wanda asks, her eyes still on the screen. "Bobby and Jean and all of them?"

"I figure they'll tell me when they get back," I say. "Anyway, it kills me to see them down in Washington while we're stuck up here. I'd think it'd kill you too."

"It does," she admits. "But I still want to see it. Look, they're getting out of the cars now. Oh goodness, all those protesters…" Wanda leans forward and turns the volume up.

For a moment, my curiosity overwhelms my bitterness and I grudgingly sit myself down on the couch to have a look. It's bedlam down there. Our classmates descend into the angry crowd, separated from the protesters only by a thin line of cops on horseback. They look stiff and terrified. I feel guilty all of a sudden, even though it was hardly my decision to send them down there. Would I do better? Would I be less afraid? I suppose it doesn't matter. The professor didn't want an infamous Negro to be the face of all of Mutantkind. Those four are attractive and look like regular humans — which is to say _white_ humans — so even if they're pissing themselves, I'd see the professor's point that they might make for better spokesmen, if not for Scott being there. To put the St. James Killer out in front of all those cameras and leave the Avenging Angel behind… what do you call that? Is a murderer really less frightening to America than a Negro?

Oh, but this is why I didn't want to watch the news coverage in the first place. There's nothing I can do about it but fume. And I've got better things to do than that — such as the English assignment I ought to be working on for Miss Adler. Though it occurs to me, how angry can she be, really? She must have known I'd stop to watch TV before I did.

"I saw you coming out of Hank's room before," I say. "How's he doing?"

"Still depressed," Wanda says. "I tried to make him feel better, but I don't know how good a job I did. He doesn't want anybody to see him the way he is now. He wouldn't even lift his head out from under the blankets. It's very upsetting. I don't know how much longer he can stay like this."

"You'd think he was the first obvious Mutant in the world," I say, ruffling my feathers. "How must Morty feel, seeing Hank carry on about what a monster he is?"

"Now Warren, it's different for Hank. He isn't used to it."

"None of us are, when it happens. It isn't an easy thing to get used to. But we do it all the same, because what choice have we got? A person can't lay down and die because he looks different all of a sudden. So Hank's got a little more hair and muscle than everybody else. I've got wings, Morty's all green, Miss Daucourt's blue and scaly. But we get up and face the world anyway. He's got to snap out of it and get back into the swing of things, because we're in a fight for our lives and we need all hands on deck, and certainly we can't afford to let such a sharp mind hide in his room feeling sorry for himself."

At this point I'm pacing the floor, gesticulating wildly, and when I look back to Wanda, I notice she's not listening anymore. She's staring at the screen in horror, curled up with her arms around her knees. I glance back at the screen in time to see Scott holding his bleeding head.

"What happened?"

"Someone threw a rock at Scott," Wanda says. "Warren, we've got to do something. These protesters, they're like a bunch of wild Indians. Don't you think we ought to do something?"

I watch the screen. Kids are getting hurt, and it's happening now, and I'm watching it. I think of the church bombing, how I wanted so badly to do something. I could do something now. If I can only get down there fast enough, I can fly down and pull them out of there.

"Wanda," I breathe, "what's Pietro doing right now?"

Wanda's face lights up. " _Pietro!_ " she shouts. She jumps to her feet and runs out the door, and when she gets back her brother's by her side and she's carrying a box that she promptly shoves in my face. I open it up; inside is something that looks almost like a wrestling costume. Or a bumblebee costume. It's tight and black with a yellow front and a black halo on the chest and holes cut out the back. And a kind of Zorro mask. There's a card lying on top: "For when the Avenging Angel flies again."

"Wanda, what on earth is this?" I ask, holding it up against me.

"I made it for you for Christmas, and I never gave it to you," she says. "But it's time for you to put it on. They need a hero, Warren. They need the Avenging Angel. Now. Warren, put that on. Pietro, take him there."

"You're strong enough to carry me there, aren't you?" I ask Pietro.

"I'm no weakling," Pietro snaps.

"I didn't say that, I only meant it's a long way…"

Well, now I've done it. Pietro seems to take that as a personal challenge because he wraps his arms around my waist and before I know it I'm clutching Pietro and my new costume for dear life as we zip down to D.C.

The world is a blur around me. Bugs are getting caught in my teeth but I can't close my mouth because the wind is pulling all the skin on my face back, my cheeks rippling like the sails of a ship, my eyes forced shut. It's like the fastest carnival ride I've ever been on, but a thousand times faster.

The stopping is almost worse than the moving. Pietro drops me abruptly somewhere in D.C. I suppose, but I can't see anything because the world is still spinning. I drop to my knees and heave up everything I've eaten that day. I just heave and heave and heave, and eventually my vision steadies enough to see that I'm on dirty pavement, in an alley with a dumpster in it.

"Are you done yet?" Pietro demands.

I spit one last mouthful of stomach acid onto the street. Oh Lord, I've got it in my nose. Everything smells like vomit or garbage, and the garbage smell makes me want to vomit again, only I think I've got nothing left in my stomach.

"Not everybody's used to going that fast, Pietro," I manage to sputter. "Give me a minute."

"Our friends haven't got a minute."

"Okay. Okay." I take deep breaths and blow my nose into Pietro's handkerchief. Chunks of vomit come out. I give Pietro an apologetic look.

"Just throw it in the garbage," he says, wrinkling his nose. "Come on, hero, let's go save the day."

I'm feeling a bit lightheaded, but I slip my mask on, spread my wings, and lift off. We're a block away from the Capitol building; from the air, I can see the commotion laid out below like a war map. To the south, Professor Xavier behind a jagged line of cops; to the east, Scott and Jean huddled in a mass of protesters; to the west, Bobby and Jason clawing their way to the steps. And some hubbub on the steps themselves; a man collapsing, shaking on the ground as people swoop in all around him. They're shouting, "Senator Kelly!" What on earth…

But I haven't got time to figure out what's going on there. I've got a choice to make. I'm closest to Scott and Jean, and I know for a fact that Scott's been injured, so I fly down, hovering above them. Somehow, they've made a circle space between them and the protesters; an invisible barrier of some sort.

"Scott! Jean!" I call. Could I carry them both at once and still fly? Am I strong enough? I guess I'll find out.

"Take Jean!" I hear Miss Daucourt shout. "We'll get Scott!"

I search the crowd; Mr. Eisenhardt and Miss Daucourt, in the guise she donned this morning, are pushing their way towards Scott and Jean. And Jean's looking up at me now, and the protesters are closing in.

I swoop down, scoop Jean up, and flap as hard as I can to get back up in the air. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and I feel a tingle. I'd wanted to feel her arms around me, but not like this. She's craning her neck to look down at Scott.

"No, no, no, put me down!" Jean cries. "Put me down and get Scott out of there!"

"Your nose is bleeding," I say.

"That's only from the stress," she says. "I was — I was creating a barrier around us. It took a lot of concentration, but I did it. I could have held it up. Scott's defenseless down there!"

"Defenseless? He can kill people with his eyes!"

"He doesn't _want_ to kill people. Warren, I know him. He'll refuse to fight back. They'll kill him and he still won't open his eyes even a crack."

Well, by now we're back at the alley with the dumpster where Pietro and I arranged to meet back up. He's already got Bobby there, and Bobby's heaving up just like I was. I drop to the ground and place Jean down gently.

"I'm going back for him," I promise.

"Thank you," she says.

A silver blur on the ground and a black-and-yellow angel in the sky rush back to the Capitol building. Even in the few minutes we were gone, we can see that the situation has changed. There are so many more cops than there were - an impossible number of cops, all yelling to disperse. And most people have. There's still a crowd around the steps, and an ambulance. Senator Kelly's being taken away on a stretcher. Mr. Eisenhardt and Miss Daucourt are holding a roughed-up Scott up between them, encircled by the cops. On the outside of the circle, Jason stands alone, one hand outstretched, the other at his temple. Pietro whizzes by and sweeps him up, and in a moment Jason is gone and most of the cops vanish as though they were never there.

Because, it turns out, they weren't.

Mr. Eisenhardt is cursing in German, loudly, as he and Miss Daucourt carry Scott into the parking lot where Professor Xavier is waiting. I swoop down to join them.

"Jean, Bobby, and Jason are in a little alley a few blocks that way," I tell them. "Pietro and I took them there."

"Go back and get them, please," Professor Xavier says. "We've got to get in the car before the protesters regroup."

I figured he'd be sore with me, but he isn't. I fly back and tell the others. This time, Pietro and I don't carry anyone; Jean, Bobby, and Jason hoof it, not wanting another round of nausea. I can hardly blame them.

We all meet back in the parking lot just in time to find out that Mr. Eisenhardt and Professor Xavier are staying behind to take Scott to the hospital. He's worse off than I thought. They think maybe he's got a broken rib. Jean is crying and holding Scott. Miss Daucourt is trying to herd us all into her car, but we can't all fit — not with Pietro and me there.

"I'll stay behind," Jean says. Of course she will.

"No, we've got to get as many of you children back to the school as we can," Mr. Eisenhardt says. "Pietro, you ran here. Could you run back?"

Pietro only nods, and he's gone in a flash.

We ride back up with Miss Daucourt; I'm in the front seat, on account of my wings. Jean is sandwiched between Bobby and Jason in the back. She's still crying over Scott. I don't like to see her so upset; even worse that it's over some other boy.

 _What do you suppose she sees in him, anyway?_ Jason asks me telepathically. I'm a bit shocked to hear his voice in my head. I didn't think he had that gift. But then, I wonder, is he projecting the illusion of him using telepathy? It's all so confusing. I didn't think Jean could create a protective barrier, either, and yet she did.

 _He's a nice guy,_ I think back. Scott's my friend; I won't say anything against him.

 _We saved the day back there, and he just lay there and let them beat him up,_ Jason thinks. _And she won't stop crying and carrying on about poor Scott. He could've stopped it all just by opening his eyes._

 _Oh, that would've done wonders for the Mutant cause,_ I think. _Stop it. She's made her choice. No point in stewing over it._

 _She made the wrong choice._

"What was that all about, with the cops?" I ask out loud. "Why'd you have them surround the teachers?"

"I had to make it look realistic," Jason says. "They wouldn't only try to herd the protesters out; they'd go after the Mutants."

"You shouldn't have done that," Miss Daucourt says. "The professor told you all not to use your powers — I mean, _gifts_. He told you not to use your gifts. And now all of America's seen your little show."

"Would you rather that mob had hunted you down and killed you?" Jason asks. "Because that's what would have happened if I hadn't done something! Why does Scott get all the concern and all the praise for doing nothing at all, and I get reprimanded? It's all backwards!"

"Settle down, Mr. Wyngarde," Miss Daucourt says. "We'll talk about it when we get back to the school. And, I expect, we'll be talking with your parents as well."

He slumps back in a huff. Jean is still sobbing softly. It's a long, silent, awkward ride home.


	18. The End of the World

**18\. The End of the World**

 **Charles**

 **March 3rd. 11:47 p.m.**

"I'm proud of you, you know."

Through the rear-view mirror I saw Scott wince — perhaps at the sentiment, perhaps just at the pain from his fractured ribs. "For what?"

"For keeping your eyes closed when those people were attacking you," I said. "It took great moral courage."

"I wouldn't say that." He lay in the backseat on a pillow of his own rolled-up coat with Jean's scarf wrapped around it. Ribbons of light from passing street lamps swept across his face as we drove back home through the dark. The doctors had bandaged his ribs by necessity and his eyes at his request. There was no organ damage or internal bleeding, so they merely wrapped him up and sent him away with a prescription for Percodan and an order to get lots of rest.

"We all have a right to self-defense," Max said. "They could have killed you. They were most likely _trying_ to kill you. And they had to have known the risk they were taking. They knew who you were and what you could do. You would have been fully justified in striking back."

"Not everything justified is just," I said.

"Are you going to put that on a button?"

"Nobody deserves what I could have done to them," Scott said. "Nobody."

"Oh, I've met some people," Max muttered.

We pulled up to the house. As late as it was, the porch light and several downstairs lights were on. As Max got my wheelchair out of the trunk, I saw Jean fly out the front door in a robe and nightgown.

"How is he?" she asked.

"He'll be all right, Jean," I said as I pulled myself out of the car and into my chair. "The doctors said his ribs should heal themselves in six weeks."

She helped him out of the car and back into the house, fussing over him the entire way. I lingered in the driveway with Max, who lit up a cigarette. He held the lighter out to me, an offering. I waved him off.

"Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever do any good at all," I said.

Max tilted his head back, drew deeply on his cigarette, and blew a puff of smoke into the starry sky. "I've been thinking about the Congo," he said.

"The Congo?"

"I was reading an article about it in the _Times_ , back at the hospital. The president just dissolved Parliament."

"I didn't know that."

"It's just like humans, isn't it? Such a beautiful country with such a wealth of natural resources. They finally free themselves from Belgian colonial rule, and what do they do with that freedom? Fight each other. Reinstate a totalitarian government. It's human nature, I suppose, to sabotage a good thing with petty violence and a hunger for power."

"I don't agree with that at all," I said.

"And yet the same things keep happening." He turned to me, his expression unreadable in the dark. "You do realize that if you really cared, you could stop all of this. You could change the minds of every politician with a blink of your eye. This entire debate could be over tomorrow."

"Max, I don't use my gift to control people. It isn't my place to meddle with others' free will."

"Even if it costs innocent lives? How do you balance that? Senator Kelly's free will against hundreds, possibly thousands of Mutant lives?"

"Lives aren't on the line," I said.

"They are. And it's not just Mutants. Think of all our powers, combined. We could end the fighting in the Congo. End fighting everywhere, really. We could save the world."

"I don't know about all that."

"Have you noticed that the students are getting more powerful?" he asked.

"They're... they're learning the full extent of their gifts."

"And the full extent of their gifts is turning out to be greater than any of us had expected — including them." Max dropped his cigarette butt on the ground and smashed it into the cobblestone with his toe. "I only want you to understand that being crushed beneath the humans' heels is a choice. At any point, we can lift up their boots. We need only to decide that our lives are more important than politeness."

That was all he said. He put his hands in his pockets and walked back into the house. I hesitated for a moment, then followed him inside.

* * *

 **March 4th, 3:32 a.m.**

I awoke to a pounding at the door. I pulled my robe on as quickly as I could and wheeled out into the front hallway to find it filled with armed policemen. They were running towards the back of the house, and close on their heels was Moira, her face red.

"How _dare_ you barge in, and this late at night! This is a _school!_ Do you not have any decency?"

A man in a suit handed her a slip of paper. "Dr. MacTaggert, we have here a warrant to search this facility for evidence relating to the murder of Senator Robert Kelly."

" _Murder?_ "

I wheeled forward. "I'm the headmaster here. What is the meaning of this?" I demanded.

The man flashed his badge at me. "Bill Ross, FBI. Dr. Xavier, are you aware that Senator Kelly is dead?"

" _Dead?_ "

He died a few hours ago, from complications related to the forced injection of an unknown substance into his arm. We have reason to believe that this substance came from your school, and furthermore that it was one of your students who injected it. Where is Jean Grey?"

"Jean? You think _Jean_ did this?"

"Several witnesses on the scene reported the syringe floating in the air. Miss Grey was there, and is on record as being a telekinetic."

"I heard it was a man who attacked Senator Kelly," I said.

"Yeah, and there were a hundred police officers on horseback who magically appeared and disappeared. Despite multiple, detailed descriptions, we have no leads on that man and nobody who claims to have ever seen him before yesterday. She's a telepath as well, isn't she? How hard would it be for her to create a psychic projection of a man who doesn't exist? Seems easier than a hundred horses."

"Get out of my lab!" I heard Moira bellow. My stomach dropped. I rushed back to the lab as quickly as I could, to find the officers ransacking the place. Moira stood with her fists clenched, watching in helpless fury as the officers carried off her life's work.

One of them pointed to David's padlocked metal door. "What's in here?" he asked.

All of Moira's righteous indignation crumbled into nothing. She looked down at me with wide, desperate eyes.

"That's the new industrial refrigerator," I said. "Just installed. It hasn't been fully set up yet. There's nothing in there."

"Why is it padlocked?"

"We don't want the students accidentally locking themselves in. You know how teen-agers are."

"Well, I'll need to see inside." He nodded to Moira. "Unlock it."

 _Do it,_ I told her. _It'll be all right._

She nodded, stiffly made her way back to the door, and unlocked it with shaky hands. The men pulled the heavy door open. Moira squeezed her eyes shut. Two officers stepped inside and looked around. They felt a chill and saw metal shelving lying on the floor, still wrapped in cardboard and Styrofoam. They felt around for hidden doors or compartments, but found nothing. They felt no need to continue searching, stepped out, and closed the door behind them. Moira turned around and met my eyes. I let my finger fall from my temple.

Agent Ross came into the lab behind me. An officer rushed up to him and handed him three vials.

"Is this the anti-mutation serum you've been working on?" Ross asked Moira.

She examined the vials. "Yes..."

"And these three vials are all you have of the serum?"

"No. There are four."

"Where's the fourth one?"

"In the refrigerator, with all the rest."

Agent Ross peered over her shoulder at an officer standing by the open refrigerator. He shook his head. "We checked, sir. There are only three vials in there."

"When did you last count four vials? Who else has been in this lab since then?" Agent Ross demanded.

"I — It — just... just yesterday morning. And no one, I don't think. I don't know, I'd been teaching classes all day. But it was only me and the students, and Irene, and Amelia. Everyone else was in D.C."

"We'll have to take statements from every faculty member here, and all of the students who were at the Capitol building," Agent Ross said. He stared directly at me. "Starting with Jean Grey."

"I'm right here," Jean said coolly. She was standing in the doorway with Max and a crowd of students. "And I can tell you right now, I had nothing to do with—"

"ON THE GROUND!" one of the officers screamed, pointing his gun at her. She threw her hands up in terror, but did not react quickly enough. The officer threw Jean's head against the floor with a sickening smack and twisted her arm back to handcuff her. "Miss Grey, you are under arrest for the murder of Robert Kelly. You have the right..."

"You can't do this!" Scott shouted, pushing his way into the room.

"Young man, back away or I'll charge you with obstructing an officer," Agent Ross warned.

"This girl is innocent," Max said.

"She is accused of using telekinesis to inject a senator with a deadly substance."

"It wasn't telekinesis. It was magnetism," Max said.

We all turned to stare at him. Even the police paused in their arrest of Jean.

"Daddy, you didn't..." Lorna breathed.

"It's true. I was the man on the steps. I controlled the metal in the syringe to lift it and inject it. It was all me. Jean had nothing to do with it. Moira had nothing to do with it. No one here knew of my plan." He held out his arms. "I'll come peacefully. Just let the girl go."

Agent Ross took the handcuffs off of Jean and threw them on Max's wrists. True to his word, he did not resist. Two police officers flanked him, each taking an arm, and steered him into the hallway. Wanda and Lorna ran after them.

"He couldn't have done it!" Lorna cried. "Nobody here did! It's all a lie!"

"Charles," Max called, "look after my children."

 _I will, Max. Only tell me... why? Why did you kill him?_

 _He isn't dead. They're lying to us. It is Gestapo tactics; they'll tell us whatever it takes to lock us away. The senator is fine. He's going to be one of us. He's going to_ understand.

They dragged him outside to the police cars, out of range of my telepathy. We lingered in the hall, the students and Moira and I, and watched the police officers leave with Max in tow. Scott held Jean up, or rather they held each other up, both of them bloodied and broken. His daughters wept in the doorway. Pietro, for his part, merely watched his father leave with a scowl. Whether he was angry at his father or at the police, I did not know.

* * *

 **March 8th. 9:17 p.m.**

At roughly one in the morning on March 4, 1964, Senator Robert Edward Kelly died in his room at George Washington University Hospital.

Two days later, spurred on by the passing of Senator Kelly, the House of Representatives voted on the Mutant Registration Act. We were not invited back to testify. The bill passed with a veto-proof majority.

Max was in jail, awaiting trial. All manifested Mutants were required to register with the government by July 1st.

President Johnson signed the bill late the next night, in private. It was a Saturday, and almost midnight. There was no ceremony, no pictures. Nobody got any pens. The next evening, he called me privately to apologize.

"You know my hands were tied."

"I know, Mr. President."

"And you must agree that something's got to be done at least to control dangerous Mutants like your friend Mr. Eisenhardt."

"We can police ourselves."

"Then _police yourselves_. Chrissake, somebody's got to do it, and if you can't keep your own house in order, it's gonna fall to the government."

I was silent for a moment, my ear aching against the receiver, listening to the dead air and the president's breathing — or Agent Duncan's.

"Did Jack know?" I finally asked. "That the FBI was spying on this school? Tapping our phones?"

"Knew about it? He signed off on it. His son-of-a-bitch brother authorized it," he said. "I thought you were a mind-reader."


	19. Hello Walls

**19\. Hello Walls**

 **Hank**

In the days following Mr. Eisenhardt's arrest, the school has grown very quiet, and that suits me just fine. I have spent the better part of a month attempting to become invisible. I eat alone, stay out of common rooms, show up to class as late as I can, and generally try to avoid notice. That is no easy feat when there are fewer than a dozen students, but I do my best. I wear a hat low on my head and stuff my arms into shirt sleeves suddenly tight against the carpet of rough black fur on my arms. I nearly bake beneath so many layers of clothing.

I realize it is absurd. They all know what happened to me — what I did to myself. No amount of clothing will ever make me inconspicuous. But what else can I do? I can't abide the others' curious stares or pitying smiles. I would stay in bed all day if only I didn't have classes, so I keep my head down. I do my schoolwork. I wait for the end of the school year to come.

And then what? I can hardly go to college like this. When first I came to this school, I had hoped for social acceptance, and now I have only isolation. I had hoped for an apprenticeship, and now my mentor's work is halted. I had hoped for Mutant advancement, and now we are more hated than ever.

It is Saturday, the day of Senator Kelly's funeral. He gets a state funeral, of course, with all the pomp and circumstance befitting his title. It is aired on television, of course, because it seems hardly a few months can go by without another public figure assassinated and publicly mourned. The nation can scarcely stand so much death and sadness, and this time they have a clear villain: Mr. Eisenhardt, yes, but really all Mutants by extension. They have swiftly punished us by passing the Mutant Registration Act. I suspect they will continue punishing us for years to come.

I am not watching the funeral. I am sitting in my dorm room, reading Kafka's _The Metamorphosis_ , because I lack subtlety even in my self-loathing. I am alone. Pietro is with his sisters visiting their father in prison. I do not remain alone for long, though. Bobby barges in without warning and flops down on my bed with a comic book. He doesn't even say anything. He just makes himself right at home. I'm in no mood to put up with such rude interruptions.

"Well hello, Bobby, of course you may come in. What? Yes, you absolutely may lie down on my bed! I don't mind at all."

"You ever read pirate comics?" Bobby asks.

"Can't say that I have."

"You should. They're really good. My personal favorite is _The Thrilling Adventures of Corsair_ , but if you ask me, it's gotten sort of—"

"I _didn't_ ask you. Listen, Bobby, could you read that somewhere else? I've got reading of my own to do."

"So do I, but you don't see me complaining about it. Hey, do you like jazz?"

"I like jazz just fine."

"We never did make it down to Café Au Go Go, did we? I was thinking maybe we could catch a show down there sometime this weekend. Sometimes they've got stand-up comedy, but sometimes they're playing jazz."

I place a thick, hairy finger in my place in the book and turn to look at Bobby. "Are you joking? You think I can just walk on into a coffee house? Do you remember _why_ we never made it down there the last time? What makes you think this time would be any different?"

Bobby shrugs. "Maybe they'll be more scared of us."

I hunch over my desk. "Well, I do look rather more frightening nowadays…"

"Aw Hank, that's not what I meant. I only meant that, well, a Mutant killed a senator. Maybe they'll think we've got syringes on us!"

"Bobby, I'm sure you have the best of intentions, but I prefer to stay away from prying eyes and angry mobs."

"So what, you're just gonna hide in your room forever?"

"I don't know what I'll do."

"Well, could you at least hide out in some other rooms? Because everybody's in the billiards room, talking about Mutant registration, and they could really use your brains in that conversation. I don't much see your point in avoiding _us_. It's dumb, in the first place, 'cause we're all Mutants too, and you're not any more a Mutant than you were before, you're just more obvious about it now. And in the second place, I'd think you'd get pretty lonely not talking to anybody, or at least want to cut your shirts like Warren cuts his because those buttons look about ready to pop."

He takes a deep breath and buries his face in his comic book again. I run a hand over the shoulder of my shirt. Bobby's right; my increased mass is straining the seams. My torso is divided by a line of black diamonds where the fabric is pulled back to reveal the thick fur on my chest. Maybe I ought to order some bigger clothes from a catalog, if my parents will wire me the money.

"Do you think I haven't noticed how they look at me?" I ask. "I've turned myself into a sideshow freak, and they can't help but stare."

"Oh, stop it. Everybody still likes you, in fact I hear the others talking about how much they miss you, but they don't know how to talk to you when you're like this. They're worried."

"You sound like Jean."

"Well, do you ever think maybe Jean's right? She's a telepath, after all. If anybody knows what people are thinking, it's her. So maybe you want to hide, that's fine, I get that. But I wish you wouldn't hide from me. Lorna already hates me, so Jean and Wanda hate me in solidarity, and Morty, you know, barely ever talks at all anyway, so with you giving everybody the silent treatment I've got nobody to talk to at all. And I can tell you for a fact that _I_ don't think you're a sideshow freak. Your body's not so bad, if you want to know the truth. You look sort of cool, really! And I'll bet you'll never have to wear a coat again. So anyway, would you at least come out for my sake? If only because I don't have anybody to talk to either?"

I hadn't thought how Bobby must be feeling. It's strange how atomized we've all become recently, splitting off into little subgroups or drifting off alone. The three Eisenhardts are their own little star cluster, Scott and Jean twin suns revolving around each other. I suppose Bobby's a meteoroid, once part of an asteroid belt but now blasting through space all on his own.

And then there's David. A heaviness settles in the pit of my stomach. I was the only connection he had to other teen-agers, but I haven't spoken to him since … since it happened. I can't bring myself to face him as I am now: walking proof that the only hope he had of getting out of that room was nothing more than a pipe dream. Is it for his benefit or mine that I avoid him? It seems impossible to escape the conclusion that I am a coward as well as a fool.

I sigh and close my book. "All right, fine. Let's go."

Bobby's face lights up. He leads me downstairs to the billiard room, where most of the other students are gathered. Only the Eisenhardts are missing. The funeral is playing on TV but nobody is paying attention.

"Well, _I'm_ not going to register," Warren says.

"What's the point of _you_ resisting? Everybody knows who you are anyway," Jason says (a bit jealously, I might add).

"They don't know my name," Warren says. "They don't know my real identity. And in any case, it's the principle of the thing. We shouldn't have to register. We shouldn't be treated differently from any other citizen."

"I don't see how we've got a choice," Jean says. She's got black eyes and a bandaged nose from the night the police threw her against the floor. "They'll only find us and lock us up if we don't register. Then they'll know who we are _and_ we'll have criminal records. The only other option I can imagine is living on the run, and what kind of life is that?" She looks up to see me lingering in the doorway and smiles. _Hello, Hank. It's good to see you._

I force a smile. Perhaps she pities me. She's using her telepathy to give me the choice of joining or not. But Bobby walks right in and sits down on the billiard table, so I follow him, an enormous furry shadow. Everyone falls silent. I feel their eyes on me. Jean scoots closer to Scott on the couch to make room for me. As delicately as I can manage, I squeeze my hulking frame into the space between the armrest and Jean.

Warren breaks the silence. "What if we did get arrested? What if we publicly refused to register? We could write a open letter in the _New York Times_ or something, explaining why we weren't going to register. And we would let them arrest us and we go to jail, and - and we'd do interviews and write more articles. That's how this sort of thing is done."

"My parents are already threatening to pull me out of here," Bobby says. "I think if all the students here started making trouble, this whole place would get shut down."

"So?" Warren says. "My parents are threatening the same thing. The school's already under investigation because of Mr. Eisenhardt, and we already made trouble back in Washington. Let's face it, Xavier's is probably done for. Let's not hand our lives over to the government for the sake of a school that's just gonna be shut down anyway."

"Have you ever been to jail?" Wanda asks. Everyone's eyes flash to the doorway. Wanda, Pietro, and Lorna are standing there, apparently just returned and looking grim. "You say 'let's get arrested,' but you don't know. They've got a whole little setup on Rikers Island just for Mutants now, and it's just… it's just…" Her eyes well up with tears. "You can't understand how awful it is. And that's where we'll all go if we don't register."

Pietro wraps his arms around his sister, who breaks down sobbing.

"I'm sure it's awful," Warren says. "That's the point. What are you willing to risk to stand up for your freedom?"

"Why don't we just get out of the country?" Bobby asks. "Run away to Canada or something. Maybe they'd let Mutants in as refugees."

"They're probably working on their own MRA," Jason says. "Learning from us."

Scott points to a small table in the corner. "Hey, where did that cat come from?"

We all turn and look. And there's Zabu, slinking under the table, exploring as quietly as he can. My heart jumps. He notices us looking at him, freezes and flattens his ears, and races out of the room with his belly close to the floor.

"It's probably a stray," Jean says. "Did you guys leave the door open when you got back in?"

I must be very careful, and casual, and not reveal my panic. I attempt to mimic Zabu's silence and grace as I stand up from the couch and walk past Jean and Wanda out the door. I leave the others in the billiard room to wonder where the cat came from and whether or not the teachers might let them keep it. Only once I'm out of hearing range do I bolt down the hall to Dr. MacTaggert's laboratory.

Both doors to David's room are hanging open.

David is gone.

My head spins. Where is Dr. MacTaggert? She said she was going with Nurse Voght to do some grocery shopping for the school. That was perhaps an hour ago. She probably would have spoken with David before she left, possibly left the door unlocked as she was stepping out. How far could he have gotten in an hour? Could he already be dead? Could he have taken over somebody else's body? Perhaps he didn't leave a full hour ago. Where would he go?

Something inside me clicks. I bound up the stairs to my dorm room. There he is, standing at the window, looking out.

"David. Thank God. You must return to your room immediately," I say. "You don't understand, it's dangerous for you to be out here."

"People think I don't know what's going on, but I know what's going on," he murmurs. "My name is David MacTaggert, I know that, but my body's name is Kevin Haller. Kevin's still here, in me, and also Jack and Ian, even though their bodies died, they're all here in my brain, in Kevin with me. I remember all the things that they remember, and sometimes I get confused as to who I am, but I know what's going on. I know I killed them when I took their bodies. All the people I killed, I carry them with me." He turns to the mirror and stares at his reflection, his blue eyes and dirty blond hair, so unlike his mother's dark features. "I'm not supposed to be in here, Hank McCoy."

"I believe you when you say you know what's going on. I know you know you'll die out here, unless you steal one of _our_ bodies. And I know you'd never do that."

"I'm never leaving that room again if I go back. I saw my chance. Mother left the door unlocked. I saw my chance and I took it. Because there is no cure. You know that. Mr. Eisenhardt knew that. It doesn't work, and it never _will_ work, because the government took it all away, and I'll be in that room forever."

"David, you can't know that. Nobody can say that for sure. Now, you really must return to your room. We'll figure something out. Scientific research is often—"

He spins around to face me, his eyes round and pleading, his fingers grasping at my shirtsleeves. "Come outside with me," he begs. "Don't tell my father, please, just come with me. We're not supposed to be in here. Don't lock yourself up, Hank McCoy. Come outside with me. Please."

"You don't understand," I say gently. "You're going to die." But looking into his eyes, I know he understands perfectly. He can't stand to be in that little metal room anymore. He can't stand to live with the memories of the boys whose bodies he stole. He knows precisely what it means for him to go outside, and he wants it, and nothing I or anybody else can say will change his mind. And he wants to spend his last few hours on earth with me, the closest thing he has to a friend.

I look out the window. Evening is coming on. We don't have much time.

"All right," I say. "Let's go."

* * *

We traipse through the woods, and David cranes his neck to watch the darkening sky, and I watch David's face. He delights at his cloudy breath in the frigid air, at the crunch of dead leaves underfoot and the latticework of bare branches overhead. There's still a little snow on the ground, in patches here and there, sparse and dirty and crusty. We scrape together a little snowman about the size of a baby doll, and a snowcat to lie curled up at his feet. They're small and brown and lopsided, but they exist. He finally did it. I can see his cheeks starting to sink in, but David is beaming.

We continue on through the trees until we reach the reservoir. We skip stones on the water and watch the Canada geese swoop down from their long stay in the south. Ian was good at skipping stones, and therefore so is David. I'm no good; I don't know my own strength, not anymore, and all my stones fall in with a graceless plop. I'd be frustrated if David wasn't enjoying himself so much. After a while, he tires of skipping stones and we settle down on the grass to watch the sun set over the reservoir, the reds and yellows reflected on the water.

As evening falls, the woods awaken. A herd of deer step haltingly along the shoreline, grazing and drinking with cautious eyes trained on us. The geese flock brazenly around us, honking and flapping their wings, and stretching their long striped necks. The birds sing to each other and squirrels shimmy up and down trees. The sharp cry of a red-tailed hawk echoes over the treeline. Maybe that hawk is a mother, hunting for food for her chicks. Something small and vulnerable will die tonight, so that something else small and vulnerable may live. This place is like a bustling city of all different creatures, plant and insect and mammal and fish, all in a dance of life and death. All David wanted in the world was to be a part of this again.

Dusk is falling, and David is dying. Even in the blue gloom, I see him withering away. He looks like a mummy, all bones wrapped in waxy wrinkles of skin. He's run out of energy to move or even speak much, so we sit beside each other in companionable silence and watch the dance go on around us. David leans his head on my shoulder and closes his sunken eyes. I hope that my fur feels soft, and think for a moment that maybe it would all be worthwhile if it could just provide that one small comfort now. I wrap an arm around his painfully hot body. He's burning up and shivering.

"Take care of Zabu for me," he says, his voice thin and raspy.

"Of course I will," I say.

Soon the sun dips below the horizon, and David stops shivering. His body cools, but I stay there by the water, cradling his body and weeping as the stars come out.

This is all he gets: fourteen years and a dirty little snowman. Kevin and Ian and Jack get even less. I suppose this is why religion exists, to explain why this sort of thing has to happen, why everybody has to die, why everybody has to kill. Sometimes I wish I could believe in a god. Perhaps I'd be happier. Sometimes I think that if I only look at the world with clear eyes, it will provide me an answer that will satisfy all the questions in my mind.

I can't believe that this is a part of any plan, that David was born to live only a few hours past puberty. Perhaps if he'd stayed in that room, Dr. MacTaggert or somebody — maybe even I — could eventually have developed a cure, and he could have had decades to hike through the woods and build snowmen. Or perhaps he would only have languished in that gilded cage until he died. Perhaps I should have tried to stop him. Perhaps I would have failed, and he would only have died alone. Perhaps his mother was wrong to stretch it out, to put off the inevitable.

I look around at the life that surrounds me. They're all mutants. Every living thing is, ultimately. But we Mutants seem different somehow. Our parents split the atom and unleashed a power that nobody understands, that nobody knew could exist. Perhaps we're not supposed to be here.

Or perhaps we simply have to find our way back to the dance.

I pick up David's little body and carry him back to the school. I don't know what I'll tell his mother, or anybody else for that matter.

I suppose I'll tell her that he finally built his snowman.


	20. Tell Him I'm Gone

**20\. Tell Him I'm Gone**

 **Max**

It was all so familiar, that descent from freedom into death that I had taken once before and seen others take so many times: the orderly routine, the bored distance in the guards' eyes, the casual dominance with which they barked out orders. They stripped me naked. They took me to the showers. I stared up at the showerhead for minutes until finally one of the guards got tired of waiting and turned it on for me. Water came out.

They took my name and gave me a number. They took my clothes and gave me a uniform. They took my possessions and told me I would get them back when I got out.

They always tell you that you'll get them back.

I found my spirit drifting away from my body, just as it had so many years ago. I felt myself returning to the old patterns that had kept me alive once. Now they would do so again. I let myself become a machine: cold, mechanical, detached. I walked with Death for many years, ate beside him, slept beside him. I knew his ways and was not afraid.

They handed me a stack of sheets and blankets and led me down a hall lined with cells. On either side of me were rows of Mutant men with hollow eyes, some burning with fiercely stoked fires of rage; some with only a desperate, gnawing grief; some of them dead already, and knowing it. I passed by a pale, bald man who was strapped tightly to his bed, blindfolded and completely immobilized. I heard his screams before I saw him, but soon enough another guard came by and injected him with a sedative, and he fell silent.

My own cell was comparatively humane, as cramped and dirty and plain as it was, with a metal bunkbed and a toilet and no privacy, of course. The guard led me in and took off my metal handcuffs. I heard the clink of metal bars sliding behind me, and another clink of them locking.

"You got the top bunk," my new cellmate said. He looked tough and muscled, with tattoos on his biceps and a mop of black hair on his head. He put down the newspaper he'd been leafing through, stood up from his seat on the bottom bunk, and extended a rough, calloused hand. "Name's Angelo Ursino."

I shook his hand. "Max Eisenhardt."

"I know. You're kinda a hero around here. The guys here are sick and tired of being treated like red-headed stepchildren. It's about time somebody showed those damn humies that we won't be pushed around. Soon as we heard a Mutant killed that shitheel Kelly, the place went nuts. I'd tip my hat to you if I had one, Max. The world's better off without him in it."

"Don't believe everything you hear. He isn't dead," I said, placing my sheets on the top bunk.

Angelo looked at me strangely. He picked his newspaper back up and handed it to me. The front page headline read, SEN. KELLY ASSASSINATED BY MUTANT RADICAL. Below it was a photograph of Kelly, collapsed and unconscious on the Capitol steps. I devoured the article, my brow furrowed, my teeth clenched.

"What the hell were you trying to do, if you didn't wanna kill him?"

"She lied to me," I whispered.

* * *

"I see three possibilities," I said, pouring myself another glass of whiskey. "First, the serum does nothing. In that case, the attempt serves as an empty threat. It runs the risk of making us look like hapless pushovers, and we risk getting caught for nothing.

"The second possibility is that the serum _does_ work as intended. Now, from that possibility stems two more. If he becomes a Mutant, what sort of mutation does he develop? If it's invisible or concealable, like ours, he may simply hide it from the public. That's the second possibility, and it does about as good as if the serum didn't work on him at all. If it's obvious like Morty's or Warren's or Hank's, that's the third. That really does something. Maybe he'll be thrown out of office by the very mob he created. Maybe he'll be too ashamed to show his face in public and resign. Maybe — and this is the least likely — he'll recognize us as his people and have a change of heart. Or at least back down on registration once it's _his_ life on the line."

"But Max, you're forgetting a fourth possibility," Renata said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The serum may kill him."

I remember that moment so vividly now. I remember the darkness outside the cottage and the soft golden lamplight inside. I remember the fog of cigarette smoke hovering in the air and the firmness of the couch and the bite of the whiskey. I remember Irene leaning back in her easy chair with a Mona Lisa smile and a steaming cup of tea. And I remember the cold certainty in Ren's yellow eyes.

I took a gulp of whiskey, felt it burn in my throat and tingle on my lips. "Do you think it could?"

"We don't know yet what effect it might have on non-Mutants," she said. "Only Hank has been tested. It's a reasonable hypothesis that, if it exaggerates mutations in Mutants, it should do the same in non-Mutant humans. But that's all we have: a hypothesis. And of course, it could work as expected and still kill him. Cancer is a mutation, too."

"You make a fair point. Should we risk it, then? Out of the four outcomes we can think of, only one is really favorable to us."

"Two."

"Which two?"

"He becomes an obvious Mutant or he dies," Renata said. "Either way, the anti-Mutant cause would lose its greatest champion. And we would be ridding the world of a threat to our people and our children. Don't tell me you're squeamish all of a sudden, Max."

"I'm not squeamish. It's a question of strategy. Does assassination really serve our cause?"

Renata leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs and swirling the whiskey in her glass. "I can tell you right now, I am ready to die and kill for my people, if that's what it takes. And I know you feel the same way. You've done it. You've killed to protect your people."

"That was different," I said.

"How?"

"Our goal wasn't to kill guards, it was to blow up the ovens. It was to stop their factory of death."

"But if you happened to take out a few guards along the way, you weren't exactly heartbroken."

"Of course not. I would have killed them all with my bare hands if I could."

"So what's the difference?"

"Their job was to kill us. They came to work every day with the sole purpose of murdering men, women, and children."

"So does Senator Kelly."

"And another thing — I was a young man then. I had no children, nothing to live for, and no reason to expect I'd live much longer anyway. I have Lorna and Wanda and Pietro now. They've already lost one parent. They can't afford to lose another. I know I've killed for a righteous cause, and I'd do so again. I always try to do the right thing. I just don't want the fallout to land on my children."

"And if the Mutant Registration Act passes? If Kelly becomes president? What do you think will happen to them then?"

I stood up and began pacing the floor.

"You're getting ashes on my rug," Renata said.

I picked a glass ashtray up off the coffee table and carried it with me as I paced. "Why are we wondering about these hypotheticals?" I asked. "Irene, you've been awfully quiet. You know, don't you? You know everything. If we go through with this, what will happen? Will he die? Will the authorities trace it back to us?"

Irene smiled and placed her teacup on its saucer. "Contrary to what I tell the students, I don't know _everything_ , Max. I can't see every little detail of the future. But I can promise you that we will be all right."

"Surely you can be more specific than that."

"We won't get caught," Renata said. "I'll shift into someone nonexistent. You'll be as far away as you can get while still directing the syringe. I know how to get out of a bad situation; I've done it before. Nobody knows what the serum can do. There will be an enormous crowd of people there to get lost in. People will see you far away, they won't see me at all, and they'll all be looking for a forgettable man who doesn't exist. It's a good plan."

"I'm not asking for reasoning regarding what will _likely_ happen, Ren; let the woman who can see the future tell me what _will_ happen."

"Max, I assure you with full confidence that this will be good for Mutants in the long run," Irene said.

"But _will he die_ , Irene? Just answer me."

She sighed heavily. "No, Senator Kelly will not die. Are you happy now?"

"You know this for sure?"

"Yes. He will become a Mutant, and come to see things our way."

"And my children?"

"Your children will be safe, and you will be safe, and Ren and I will be safe, in a country that does not oppress us."

In hindsight, it was obvious that she was only telling me what I wanted to hear, but I didn't see it at the time. It was, after all, what I wanted to hear. So I sat back down and I took another drink and we talked well into the night.

* * *

One day bled into the next with little differentiation. They took me into a room for questioning and offered me deals in exchange for names. They knew I hadn't worked alone, but they could prove nothing. They asked me the same questions again and again, and I repeated the same answers again and again. They threatened and cajoled me, but I would not break.

"Whoever you're covering for," one detective told me, "I promise you he wouldn't return the favor if he was in your position."

I said nothing. He was right, of course. I hated him for getting under my skin, and hated myself for letting him get there. But he only said what I'd been thinking. She lied to me. Why _was_ I covering for her? And Ren — did she lie to Ren too, or were they in on it together? Had the plan always been to kill him?

And was that so bad, really? The man had fanned the flames of anti-Mutant hatred all across the country, building his campaign platform on our backs. How many Mutants died because of his words? It was self-defense, really. Perhaps Irene was right, that this would be good for Mutants in the long run.

Over the next few days, I got to know Angelo better. He was a petty thief with the ability to project a protective force field. The police couldn't shoot him, but they could still handcuff him. We awoke together at the same time every morning, made our beds with hospital corners, stood at attention for the guards, and were counted. We were paraded to the cafeteria and back, except for those of us who could not leave their cells and had their meals brought to them. Whenever I was walking past, I would look in on the bald man strapped to his bed.

"Now, in there, that's Telford," Angelo whispered to me, cocking his head towards the bald man's cell. "We call 'im the Vanisher. We all got Mutant names here that we go by. I'm the Untouchable, Freddy over there's the Blob. We all got names. Anyway, we call him that on account of he can teleport anywhere in the world, poof, just like that. Even take people with him, too. That's why they got him like that. He escaped maybe six times. They kept catchin' him, though, because he was kinda dumb about it. Everytime he got out, he'd rob a bank or a museum or something, some big-name place, lots of attention. I tell ya, if I had his gift, I'd be a whole lot smarter about it. I'd just hit a bunch of little no-name jewelry stores. Anyway, he can't teleport unless he can see where he's going, so they put that blindfold on him. And they strapped him down so he couldn't take it off. Now they keep him sedated all the time, so he don't know he can't move. He don't know _where_ he is."

He then pointed to a heavy door with no bars and no window, just a slot at the bottom. "In there is Byron. We call him the Burner. He can make fire, start fires, whatever. They lined the walls with ceramic and just left him in there. He can burn all he wants in there, but it won't get out."

"Behind door number three? Vincent, a.k.a. Mesmero. He's a telepath. They don't know how to shut off telepathy, so they just play loud music in his cell all the time and keep the lights on high to stop him from concentrating. If he can't make sense of his own thoughts, he can't mess around with anybody else's."

"It might be kinder simply to kill him," I said.

"Probably," Angelo agreed. "That's where they're headed, I'll bet. They don't know what to do with us Mutants. They can't hold us like normal folks. But they don't see us as normal folks, do they?"

We reached the cafeteria, took our trays and lined up to receive the foul-smelling garbage they fed us here. Everything smelled bad here: the food, the other prisoners, the island itself.

"What are they in for?" I asked. "The ones in solitary."

"Mesmero was a con artist, or so I hear — used his powers to trick people into giving him their money. Vanisher robbed banks and stuff, like I said. Burner, well… he's in for arson, no surprise there."

"Hey, Untouchable!" A man waved from a nearly-empty table. He had a padlocked metal blindfold around his eyes, almost identical to the one the Boys' Training School had made Scott wear. My stomach dropped. They were learning from each other, the jails and prisons and reformatories, developing and perfecting technology to keep us contained.

"This here's Peepers," Untouchable said as we sat down. "He can see pretty much forever, through walls and things too. And he shoots beams like that St. James kid, but he can control 'em. And that's Pyro. He can control fire, but not make it. Guys, this is Max Eisenhardt — the man of the hour."

"Hot damn," Peepers said. "It's an honor. You got a Mutant name yet, sir?"

I smiled. I was the oldest man in there by quite a few years. The others were mostly young men in their twenties, once and future gangsters, hardened and cynical but still achingly reminiscent of my students. How many of them were in here simply because their mutation left them with no legitimate way of making a living?

"Not yet; we oughta come up with one for him," Untouchable said. "Something about metal. That's your thing, right? Movin' metal with your mind?"

"Technically, I manipulate magnetic fields," I said.

"Magnets! That's something," Pyro said. "How about Magnetor?"

"No, no," Untouchable said. "Take off the 'r'. Magneto. Whaddaya say, Max?"

I raised my cup to them. "Magneto sounds just fine."

"Magneto it is, then," Untouchable said.

"And what are you boys in for?" I asked.

"Peepin'," Peepers said.

"Arson," Pyro said.

"You fire Mutants and your arson," I said. "Am I the only Mutant in here for a _serious_ crime?"

Untouchable rubbed his chin. "Only real criminal in here, I'd say, is Freddy Dukes. He killed a man. He's our only murderer. Except for you, of course."

I looked around the cafeteria. "Where is he?"

"In solitary, natch. He's a big one, loads of fat but the strength of an ox. Worked in a carnival freak show. They called him the Blob. Story goes, he finally got tired of people laughing at him. One guy I guess taunted him a little too hard, and Blob just snapped and ran into the crowd and strangled the guy."

"This question may sound foolish, but why is he in there and I'm out here?" I asked.

"You turned yourself in. You're cooperating. Me, I only got freedom of movement 'cause they ain't afraid enough of me. My power's defensive. Pyro can't do nothin' without a fire already burning, Peeper's got that blindfold… As for you… well, just look at all the metal in this place. You could bust outta here in a second. Why don't you? Why don't you bust us all out?"

I gave it some thought, but as the days went on, I found it harder and harder to come up with an answer.

* * *

The day of the senator's funeral, my children came to visit. We spoke through glass, unable to touch, but they were there. And looking back, I think that was my turning point. My spirit returned to my body and filled with pain.

"I know you didn't do it," Lorna sobbed, her hand pressed against the glass. "I know you're only covering for Jean. But you don't have to! The police'll figure out who did it. The real killer's out there somewhere." She looked younger than she'd looked in a long time, her eyes large and streaming with tears. Those eyes bore holes into mine, as if she was searching for her father in the husk of a man that I'd become.

" _Sternchen_ ," I said, holding my hand against hers through the glass, "I did it. I killed him."

"No, you didn't!" she shouted. "Tell them you didn't!"

"Settle down," a guard snapped.

Wanda gently pulled Lorna away from the window. She had the red-rimmed eyes of someone who'd been crying, but she kept her tears in now, for her siblings' sakes.

"Do you have a trial date set?" she asked.

"Not yet," I said. "The process moves slowly. Charles — I don't know if he's told you this, but Charles hired a lawyer for me. An expensive one, and a good one."

Wanda nodded. "Do you think… I don't suppose he could get you off."

I had confessed to the assassination of an elected official. I was going to the chair. A team of the best lawyers in the country could not change that.

"Well, I don't know about that," I said. "Most likely I'll go to Sing-Sing for awhile. That's closer to you kids. You can come visit me." Wanda blinked away tears. My throat tightened.

Was this really the future I'd accepted for myself? Rotting in a cell, seeing my children only through glass until the state got around to killing me? I swore I'd never be a prisoner again, and yet here I was, of my own volition. I let the last vestiges of the old numbness fade. I let the rage wash over me.

I looked down at the speak-thru in the window, with its little slots that let me hear a tinny version of my children's voices. It was made of metal. I could rip it out of the window right now. I could smash the metal bars and doors and walk right out. They had no way of stopping me. Anytime I wanted, I could simply walk out, and hear my children's real voices and touch their real hands.

But where would we go? The government would never stop hunting me, and my children would never be safe with a fugitive.

"Your children will be safe, and you will be safe, and Ren and I will be safe, in a country that does not oppress us."

"We could probably take over the world if we wanted to."

I knew what I had to do. "Wanda, listen to me," I said. "You will be safe. No matter what happens, I will make sure you are safe. Do you understand?"

She nodded. She was made of steel, that girl. If she had to, she could hold this family together through sheer force of will. I would make sure she never had to.

Before they left, as the girls were heading for the door, Pietro turned around to face me. "The bastard had it coming," he said. "I'm proud of you, Dad."

They disappeared into the hallway. I kept my eyes on them until the very last moment. Wanda's bright red scarf fluttered behind the cement wall, leaving only dingy gray, and every part of me sank.

* * *

"We each have gifts beyond measure," I said. My voice was low, so the guards couldn't overhear. We were all seated at the table in the day room, hunched over the card game we were supposedly playing. "You could all do great things for the world, but instead you are here. And it isn't your fault. This society has failed you. It has pushed you to the fringes because you are different, and so you waste your gifts on crime.

"But there is another way. If they refuse to give us a place in this world, then to hell with them. We'll carve out our own place: a Mutant homeland, where we can live in peace and develop our abilities to their fullest extent, where our crimes will be forgiven and forgotten, and we'll all get a second chance. Gentlemen, we are as gods. We can do things no human being can do. A handful of us can found a nation and make it greater than any nation has ever been."

"Where, though?" Pyro demanded. "Where would this glorious Mutant utopia be?"

"Well…" I shuffled my cards. "I've been thinking about the Congo."

* * *

I remained a model prisoner right up until the night I rose from my bed, twisted open the bars of my cell, and wrapped them around the nearest night guard. Unus and I strode down the cell block hall like it was ours. It was ours. It had always been ours. We needed only to claim it.

With a flick of my wrist, I wrenched the bars and doors off of every last cell. Alarms sounded and guards came running, and we dispatched them all with intoxicating ease. I stormed Mesmero's cell, crushing the lights and the speakers that kept him addled. His eyes cast about the room. He seemed baffled by the sudden darkness and silence.

I knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "My name is Magneto. I know you've been through more than any man should ever have to bear. You're free now to do as you please. I hope you'll come with me to our new Mutant homeland, and I ask that you help us get there. Will you?"

He blinked at me in confusion, but nodded yes.

I led Mesmero to the Vanisher's cell, and unstrapped the poor man from his bed. "This man is a powerful teleporter. He can take us to Africa, but right now he's too sedated to function. Could you do something for him?"

Mesmero nodded, and placed his hands on the Vanisher's head. In a moment, the Vanisher's eyes flickered open.

"What's happening?" he murmured.

"Revolution," I replied.

Maybe Irene knew that I would do this. Maybe this was her plan all along. If it was, then Ren was right. It was a good plan.

The Blob carried the Vanisher out. I ripped Peepers' blindfold off. A man called Shocker turned off all the electricity in the entire Rikers Island jail complex and a man called Avalanche shook the island until the walls fell, and when every last Mutant prisoner was free, Pyro and Burner worked together to burn the wretched place to the ground. We stood together by the bridge to Queens, watching the police cars speed towards us, sirens wailing.

"Mags, if we're going to Africa, we'd better go soon," Untouchable told me.

"Not yet," I said. "Peepers, can you see the Xavier School in Salem Center from here?"

Peepers looked north and squinted. "Yep."

"Mesmero, could you read his mind and project that image to the Vanisher?"

Mesmero nodded. "Done."

"Vanisher, take us there. We've got a few more passengers to pick up."


	21. Make the World Go Away

**21\. Make the World Go Away**

 **Lorna**

It's strange, going to a funeral for a person you didn't even know existed until he didn't. All the professor would tell us was that David was Dr. M's son, that his mutation made it so he had to stay in a special little room in the back of her lab or he'd die, and that one day he'd up and decided to leave that room.

Apparently all the teachers knew, and also Hank (he cried his eyes out at the funeral). Why didn't they tell any of the rest of us until he died? Why did he die in the first place? Nobody will tell us. Jean must have picked up something with her telepathy, but she hasn't said anything, not even to Wanda — or at least if she has, Wanda's refused to pass it on to me. Pietro said he heard from Bobby that Professor X himself was the father, but you can't trust Bobby's word on anything. It's all just rumors. I don't see why the teachers are still keeping things from us. We know David existed; there's no point in hiding anything else about him now.

I'm sad for him, I guess. I'm definitely sad for Dr. M, who's obviously devastated. Her son is dead, her research is gone, and on top of all that she has to take over my dad's math classes while he's in jail, and keep teaching science besides. So I'm sad for her, and sad for myself, and for my dad, and everybody here really. It's all falling apart. Nobody believes this school will see a second year.

I guess we have a school cat now, for as long as we still have a school. That's sort of nice, I guess. His name's Tiger, he's a fat orange tabby, and he's curled up on my lap right now. Probably because I'm sitting in the window seat in the living room, which is right over the radiator so it's nice and warm. And it's quite late at night, so everybody else is asleep with their doors closed.

I'm in the living room because I can't sleep and I'm tired of staring at the same old walls. I want new and different walls to stare at. I wonder if Tiger misses David, or likes me, or if he'd just jump on any old lap? I wonder if the professor will let us stay here — me and Wanda and Pietro and Tiger too — with him and Scott after the school closes down? He told us he'd take care of us while Daddy was in jail. I try to imagine us as one big, happy Mutant family. I try to imagine visiting Daddy at Sing-Sing. If it's anything like Rikers Island, I don't want to see the inside of it. Pietro says it's even worse.

I start to cry. Tiger jumps down from my lap, annoyed at my sobbing. Daddy looked so tired and frail when we went to visit him. He didn't look like himself at all. In my memory, he looms above me, tall and strong and proud. I want to remember him like that, after they — _if_ they execute him. I try to imagine what it might be like. Could we come and see him one last time? What I should tell people if they ask me what my father does? Maybe I should ask Scott what it's like to be an orphan.

"He's a survivor," Wanda told me as the car pulled away from Rikers Island. "He'll survive this too." I didn't say anything, just craned my neck to watch the jail through the back window as it retreated into the distance. But she knows he won't. We both know. It's all just empty words.

But I can't think like that. I sit up straight and smear the tears off my cheeks with the balls of my hands. My father is alive and needs me — needs all of us — to keep our spirits high for him. I was a mess during that visit, and I'm sure that only made him feel worse. I've got to stop crying so much.

I rise from my seat, snorting back the snot that always drips when you cry too much, and I'm thinking of heading into the kitchen for a midnight snack when I hear a key rattling in the front door lock. I freeze. It's the middle of the night, and everybody who's supposed to be here is here. I think of the iron fire poker next to the fireplace, and it flies into my hand. How much damage I could do, I don't know. I could probably fling it at the intruder with my mind, pointy end first. Then again, this person clearly has a key. What if it's Miss Adler or Miss Daucourt? No… if they wanted to come into the main house, they'd have come in through the kitchen entrance in the back. Who is this person?

The door swings open and shut, and my father is standing in the darkness of the entrance hall. He's wearing the same clothes he was wearing the day he went to Washington, the same clothes he went to jail in. He looks around and finally spots me. I drop the fire poker and he drops to one knee, his arms spread wide and a grin spread wider.

" _Sternchen!_ "

I run over to him and fall into his arms. The tears come back, staining the scratchy wool of his coat. He hugs me tight; once again the strong, indomitable man I remember.

"Daddy, what are you doing here? Did they let you go? Did the real killer confess?"

He stiffens, pulls back from me, and grips me hard by the shoulders, looking me in the eye. "Lorna, honey, I want you to go upstairs and wake your brother and sister, and I want all of you to pack up your things. Get two suitcases each, pack up everything important that can fit in them. Anything that can't fit, don't worry about it. And pack only for warm weather."

I back away from him. "What's going on?"

"We're leaving. You, me, Wanda, Pietro, and any other students here who want to come with us. We're going somewhere very far away, and we're going tonight."

"Where? Why so fast?" I study his face. He's sweating and his eyes are wide and bloodshot. "Daddy, you're scaring me. Tell me what's going on."

There's a pounding at the door. "POLICE!"

My father jumps to his feet. "Lorna. Go upstairs and pack. Now."

I'm such an idiot. Of course he wasn't released. He escaped. And now they're after him.

"Daddy, how are we going to—"

"Just pack! Now!" he barks.

A muffled shout from the other side of the door: "We know you're in there, Eisenhardt. Come out with your hands up."

My father looks frantically about and finally turns off the lightswitch in the living room. He clutches my hand so tightly it hurts and starts leading me towards the staircase.

But it's too late. They kick the door open and storm the entrance hall, shouting and pounding their feet and waving their flashlights that blind in the dark. Someone is screaming. I gradually realize it's me.

"—MAX EISENHARDT, YOU ARE—"

"—GET YOUR HANDS UP—"

"—FOR ESCAPING AND AIDING IN THE ESCAPE OF—"

I stand frozen in the light of their flashlights, my father clutching my arm. There's so much shouting I don't know what's being said, and so much light I can barely see the silhouettes of officers stepping cautiously, slowly towards us, guns drawn and aimed. I've never had a gun pointed at me. I feel like a rabbit, heart pounding, body frozen in place.

My father drops my hand. With a sudden calm he strides towards them, his footsteps falling rhythmic, sharp and heavy on the old wooden floor.

"YOU," he shouts through gritted teeth, spittle flying.

All guns point at him.

"WILL."

He extends his arm.

"NOT."

Their guns fly out of their hands.

"TOUCH."

The guns turn themselves around in the air.

"MY."

The guns cock.

"CHILDREN."

"DADDY, NO—!"

Six shots ring out all at once. Six men all fall in a heap, the sound muffled beneath the ringing in my ears. Six flashlights clatter to the floor and roll around, casting rotating spotlights on six twitching, dying bodies in a spreading pool of blood. I back away until I hit the wall, then slide down it, my hands clasped over my mouth, my breath escaping in trembling gasps.

One of the men has a hole in the back of his skull — the exit wound — and through the torrent of blood pouring out, I can see pink brain tissue. A strange, distant part of my mind thinks, _So that's what a brain looks like._ It's gotten on the floor, the floor I've walked on hundreds of times, the rug I've stained with mud. The scene is wobbly because my eyes are full of tears and pulsing with my racing heartbeat. I can't look away.

There are brains on the floor.

There are brains on the floor.

There are brains on the floor.

There are brains on the floor.

And then my father is in front of me, kneeling down in front of me, holding my face in his hands and staring at me with wide, wild eyes. His face is splattered with other people's blood. His voice sounds like it's underwater.

"It's okay, _Sternchen_ , it's okay. Don't look at them. Look at me. Listen, you're safe now. Okay? You don't have to be afraid anymore. You're safe now. It's okay. It'll all be okay. They'll never hurt you. I won't let them hurt you."

I can't stand to be near the gore, but his face is so close to mine, and I smell the blood, that metallic smell, the iron in it, the copper in it, I can smell it all. It's on my father's face. He did this. He got the brains on the floor. The blood is everywhere. He killed them.

He killed them.

I try to back up, pressing myself harder against the wall. "Get away from me," I whisper.

" _Sternchen_ —"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" I shriek.

And I throw him. By his dental fillings, the clasps of his suspenders, the change in his pockets, the blood in his body and the blood splattered on his face, I throw him. Up into the air and across the room, I throw him. And he slams into the opposite wall, and he falls onto a table and vase, both of which shatter beneath him, and he crumples to the floor amidst shards of wood and ceramic, clutching his stomach.

I don't know what to do, but I know I can't stand to be in this hallway anymore, so I run up the stairs to Wanda's room. Her door's already open; people upstairs heard and woke up and are coming out of their rooms. They're heading for the stairwell to see what's happened, and I'm blocking them with my arms stretched wide.

"Don't go down there!"

"Were those gunshots?" Bobby asks.

Pietro, of course, rushes right past me. In a second, he's down the stairs and back. "Lorna's right," he says. "Nobody go down there."

But our father is fast on his heels. "Listen to me," he calls up from the landing. They all lean over the railing to see him. "We don't have much time. We must leave tonight. I'm gathering a brotherhood, a brotherhood of Mutants. We will not be registered. We will not have our rights violated. We're leaving this oppressive country and founding our own. You are all welcome to join us, to make history with us as we found the first Mutant nation. All of your gifts are needed."

For a minute, everybody just stares at him in shock. Then a quiet voice pipes up from the back.

"Even my gift?" Morty asks.

My father smiles. " _Especially_ your gift."

Morty nods solemnly and starts back to his room.

Bobby grabs his arm. "You can't seriously think of joining him," he says.

"Why not?" Morty demands, yanking his arm out of Bobby's grip. "What else am I supposed to do? Stay here and be hated, and beaten, and… and ostracized? Register with the government and wait to see what they wanna do with me? I'll take my chances with Mr. Eisenhardt. He's the only one who's ever been nice to me in this crumby place anyway."

"I thought I was nice to you," Bobby says.

"You put up with me," Morty snaps, and goes into his room.

"Wow," Jason says. "I think that's the most I've ever heard that kid say."

"Are you coming with him, Jason?" my father asks. "What you did in Washington was extraordinary. _You_ are extraordinary. The Mutant state needs you perhaps most of all."

Jason's face lights up. My brother appears beside my father, bags packed.

"So you're going to drag these students away from their school and homes and families and into the Congo?" Professor X shouts up. We all lean farther over the railing; he's down at the base of the stairs, in his pajamas.

"The Congo? Is that where you want to set this all up?" Hank asks. "It's a war zone."

"That it is, Henry." Professor X looks back at my father. "What ever happened to not putting children in danger?"

"What ever happened to not reading minds?" my father shoots back. "Yes, we're going to the Congo. Yes, we'll have to subdue several rebel groups before we can establish our Mutant state. But all the humans have is bullets, and most of us can either stop or dodge them. They're no real threat to us."

"That is precisely why we must control ourselves."

My father ignores the professor to look back up at all of us. "You've seen, over the past few months, where controlling ourselves gets us. If you'd like to try another way, I've already extended my invitation. It is your choice."

You could hear a pin drop. I look around at everybody else. They're all huddled around the railing looking frightened, concerned, confused — except for Morty and Jason, who already went back to their rooms to pack. And Wanda. Wanda isn't there.

I race to her room; a beam of light streaks across the floor from her cracked-open door. She's got an open suitcase on her bed and she's stuffing her summer clothing into it.

"You're going with him? Just like that?" I ask.

"You aren't?" she responds. "He's our father."

"Didn't you hear those gunshots before? He killed six police officers just now. I saw it all. You didn't see it, you don't know… he really scared me, Wanda. What he's doing, what he's planning, it's all wrong."

"Would you rather he stand by and let those men smash _your_ face into the floor like they did to Jean's?"

"That isn't the point! They were police officers! You can't kill police officers!"

Wanda looks at me coolly. "Why? Because they were sent by the government? Oh, well, if the _government_ sent them, I'm sure that'll all turn out all right…"

"I can't believe you're defending this. You're defending murder."

"No, I'm defending my father." Wanda snaps her suitcase shut. "Your father, too. We're a family, and families are supposed to stick together no matter what."

I cross my arms. "Not this time. I'm not going."

" _Yes you are._ You don't know what you're talking about, Lorna. You're upset. Calm down and let's pack your things."

She heads for the door, but I block her way. "You aren't Mom. And you'll never be Anja. And I'm not some little kid you can just boss around. Aren't you tired, Wanda? Aren't you tired of competing with a corpse?"

Wanda slaps me across the face. I cup my stinging cheek in shock. She looks as surprised as I feel, and her eyes are filling with tears.

"Would you stop fighting me all the time?" she says. "Just once, would you stop fighting me?"

"Not on this."

"I am _not_ letting you rip this family apart, Lorna."

My shoulders fall. "I could never do that," I say. "It ripped itself apart before any of us were born."

Without another word, Wanda pushes past me and carries her bags down the stairs. "Warren… Jean… are you coming with me?" she asks. "I understand if you don't want to."

"I know that things aren't going well for us right now," Warren says, "but we can't just invade another country and take it over. There are people living there."

"All they're doing is killing each other," my father says. "Believe me, Warren, I have no intention of becoming another colonial oppressor. We can bring the humans of the Congo a peace and prosperity like they have never known."

"Right, and all they have to do is bow down to you," Warren says.

My father fixes a steely stare on Warren. "You've made it clear that you aren't interested. Well, that's a shame. Your wings and your keen mind would have been very useful. If you ever change your mind — any of you — you know where to find us." He turns around and heads down the stairs, Pietro, Morty, and Jason following close behind.

Wanda and Jean have been staring at each other in silence. I guess they're communicating telepathically, because sometimes their facial expressions suddenly change, and they look like they're both getting sadder and sadder. Wanda hugs Jean and follows the others down the stairs.

I run after them, and so do Jean and Scott. When I get down to the entrance hall, I'm astonished: the bodies are gone — the sight and the smell of them. Professor X is sitting in the hall, looking mournfully at where they used to be, and I realize he's hiding them from us. He doesn't want us to see.

This new brotherhood of Mutants walk outside through the kitchen door, and again I follow them because at any moment my father and my sister and my brother might all turn around and say, "Gosh, Lorna, you were right all along. I forgot that killing people is bad." But they don't.

My father turns to me and places both hands on my shoulders. " _Sternchen_ , is there nothing you want to take to our new home?"

I look down at the grass. It's wet and cold against my bare feet. "I'm not coming. Please stop this. Please."

"Oh! I was almost worried we'd missed all the excitement," Miss Daucourt says. She and Miss Adler are walking up from their cottage with suitcases and safari outfits. "Vincent won't mind taking on a few more passengers, I assume?"

"You lied to me," my father says. "You knew I'd go to jail, and you let me rot there, and you didn't lift a finger to help me. Why should I take you anywhere?"

"Because you know that you would never have dreamt this beautiful dream of yours if not for us," Miss Adler responds. "Because you know I lied for the greater good. I told you what I had to that you may meet your destiny. But mostly because I already know you'll let us come along, and I'm not entirely sure my arguments are what convinced you to, but in any case this is where I stop talking, and you say I unnerve you but still you won't throw us to the wolves."

My father looks like he just ate a lemon. "I wish you would stop doing that. It really does—"

"Unnerve you?"

"Stop it."

"But Ren and I may come along."

"Yes, sure. Go. Vanisher should be back at any moment."

"Will somebody please tell me what on earth is going on?" Scott says. "Miss Adler, did you really have something to do with all this?"

"Indeed I did, my darling boy."

"But _why_?"

"Because I already knew I was going to."

Scott sputters. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Free will is an illusion. You can no more change the future than you can change the past."

"What does that even _mean_?" Scott asks.

Miss Adler takes a deep breath. "Let me tell you precisely what's going to happen. The leaders of the world will not recognize the Mutant Congo; they will consider us a renegade state. Which is why we will need nuclear warheads. To defend ourselves, you see.

"We could build these weapons ourselves, but that would take a great deal of time. Better to simply take them from the country that has more than any other — and the only country that has ever used them against civilians. Magneto — that's what he's calling himself these days, by the way — will go to Cape Kennedy, in Florida, to retrieve these weapons. And all of you — by which I mean you, Scott; and Jean, and Lorna, and Bobby, Hank, Warren, and Charles — will meet him there. You will try to talk him down, and you will fail. Charles will ask you to use your optic beams to help stop him."

"He would never ask that of me," Scott says. "He knows how I feel about my eyes."

"He would. And he will. And you'll do it, because according to you, Magneto must be stopped. But you still won't want to hurt him. So you will decide to use your eyes to shoot out the firing mechanism of the warhead that he's carrying, so it cannot fire. However, you don't have any sense of precision with your gift, so Jean will try to telekinetically direct the blast to exactly the right spot. But she will fail. You will blow the warhead up, creating a nuclear explosion that will kill everyone on that base, including yourselves, all of your remaining classmates, and Professor Xavier."

Everyone is shocked into silence, but Scott quickly regains his composure. "And you," he points out. "You'll die too."

"Oh no, Miss Daucourt and I will be back in the Mutant Congo."

"Did you plan it that way?"

"Of course not. I saw it, so it will happen. I didn't plan anything. I haven't in a very long time."

In a flash of light, a pale bald man appears on the lawn.

"Ah! Vincent," my father — Magneto — says. "Can you teleport eight people at once?"

"Think so," the Vincent says in a gruff voice.

Magneto looks at me. "Are you sure you aren't coming?"

I hug myself and back away. I can't bring myself to meet his eyes. "Yes," I whisper.

He walks over and hugs me, and for a moment I think maybe Wanda's right. Maybe I am just upset and not thinking clearly. But his face still smells like the blood of the men he killed. I tear myself out of his arms and stomp back to the house. Behind me, there's a flash of light. I don't turn around.


	22. Indépendance Cha Cha

**22\. Indépendance Cha Cha**

 **Warren**

It was Candy who saw them first, back when they were little nubs — like chicken wings, tiny and ugly and useless. But they itched and ached, and every dance class I had to go through, I was scratching my back until finally the instructor reprimanded me for "ungentlemanly behavior." I forced myself to stand up straight and ignore the discomfort for as long as I had to. But the wings were growing all the while, pushing up under my tuxedo jacket.

The cotillion itself was an endurance test. Thankfully, the attention was all on Candy, and I did my part to be a handsome piece of furniture for her to look pretty against. It worked; nobody noticed but her. She found me in the dressing room after the presenting and the dancing and everything was done with. I had my shirt off and I was looking at them in that big mirror they had back there.

She didn't knock until she'd already opened the door a little. "Warren, are you in here? Your parents are—"

Her big brown eyes got even bigger. I spun around and threw my jacket back on, but it was too late. She'd seen everything.

"Candy! This is the boys' dressing room. You shouldn't be in here."

My heart was pounding. That was it, my secret was out now. She was going to tell everybody, all the Jack and Jillers, all the gossipy Links mothers. I'd never be able to show my face in Atlanta again, not after everybody found out what a deformed freak I was.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to walk in on you like that." She shielded her eyes with one lacy gloved hand several seconds too late. "I only wanted to check up on you; you seemed like maybe you were feeling under the weather, and I just — well, I'll go on back to dinner now. Your parents are worried, so what should I tell them? You can — you can say you're feeling ill and I'm sure they'll let you go home if you want."

My mind raced. Maybe she hadn't seen the wings after all. Maybe she'd only caught a little glimpse and thought they were an odd sort of rash or something. Maybe my secret was still safe.

"Uh... yes, thank you. It's nothing, really. I'll just... get myself straightened up and go back out. You don't have to tell my parents anything."

She didn't meet my eyes, but she understood. "I won't," Candy promised. "I'm sorry for staring. It isn't what you think, it's just... oh goodness, Warren, you look like an angel." She blushed then, and hurried out of the room in quick little clacking steps.

* * *

"I saw it on the news," Candy says. "That footage of him with his army marching on Léopoldville... where on earth did he get so many soldiers? I knew he was recruiting Mutants — I've heard the speeches — but there were just so _many_."

The sun's going down and I'm sitting on the floor of my room with my wings to the closed door and the phone cord snaking under it. Candy's voice comes through thin and crackly; the telephone doesn't do her justice.

"Oh, that's all Jason. I'm sure of it," I say. "Remember all those cops in Washington? He makes illusions like that. By the time people figure out Mr. Eisenhardt doesn't have a real army, it'll be too late. I guess it's probably too late already."

"You wouldn't believe the awful things the girls here are saying about Mutants. I nearly slapped one girl, Sandra. The things she said... I won't even repeat them, but she didn't know about you or that we're going steady, so she felt free to say just whatever she wanted. Everybody else keeps quiet around me, but I know what they're thinking." She sighs. "Oh, what am I doing? I shouldn't even tell you this."

"It's fine. I know the score."

"So I guess you're leaving tomorrow."

"Yeah. Everybody's going home for Easter vacation, and almost nobody is coming back. Except Hank of course, since he's a senior and well... he looks too different to go to any other school now."

"Are you finishing out the year back at Palmer?" she asks.

"Nah, it's too late for that. My parents are sending me to Booker T. Washington, then I'll reapply to Palmer for the fall."

"Oh. Well, that's a good school."

"Yeah." I run my hand over my hair and look around the dorm room. "I'll miss this place, though."

"Are you joking? When you got there, all you wanted to do was go back home."

"That was before. Now, with everything going on... it's just sad, is all. That there won't be a Mutant school any longer."

"Well, maybe when you get older, you can start one of your own. And be very careful about whom you hire."

" 'No assassins need apply.' I'll put that right in the help-wanted ad."

"I'd answer that! I've been thinking I might like to be a teacher. If you'd hire non-Mutants, of course."

"Young lady," I say in my snootiest voice, "the prestigious Worthington Academy for Gifted Youngsters does not discriminate." We both dissolve in laughter and have to take a moment to compose ourselves. "Well, I'll hate being so far away from you, I can tell you that," I tell her.

"I'll miss you too. But it'll only be for a year, and we'll see each other during vacations, and then when we graduate we can go to college in the same city."

"Let me guess: Spelman and Morehouse."

"Does that sound so terrible?" she asks.

"No," I admit. "No, it really doesn't."

We take forever to say goodbye, but once we finally do hang up, I carry the phone back into the hall. Scott's waiting out there with a book, and now I feel guilty because I'd assumed he was off somewhere making out with Jean. They've been particularly corny lately, always sneaking off to kiss or having telepathic conversations that just look like they're staring at each other and crying. I sort of want to shake them and remind them that Annandale-on-Hudson isn't that far away; they'll have plenty of opportunity to see each other. But apparently, they find anything short of turning themselves into siamese twins unbearable.

"You could've told me you were out there," I say. "I didn't mean to lock you out or anything."

Scott shrugs. "I was just waiting for you to finish your call. Everybody's building a bonfire in the back. Well, everybody but Lorna, since she's... you know how she is lately. Anyway, want to join us?"

"A bonfire? The professor's letting us do that?"

"Yeah. I guess he figures it doesn't matter anymore." He shrugs again.

I follow him down the stairs and out the back door. We don't ever use the front anymore, even after the police said we could. Way in the backyard, near the edge of the woods, a collection of deck chairs is arranged around a sputtering fire that Hank and Bobby are trying to build up while Jean cheers them on. Scott and I join in the effort, and by the time it's dark and cold enough to need a fire, we've got a reasonably respectable one — though certainly nothing I'd call a bonfire. Scott eases himself slowly down onto a chair next to Jean, since his ribs are still bothering him. I take the chair between him and Bobby, and Bobby promptly jumps back up.

"I'm going to the can," he says and disappears into the house.

"This feels like the last day of camp," I say.

"It sort of is," Jean says, handing me a bottle of Coke. "Back to the real world, where we're freaks and nobody wants to be our friends."

"Now, I don't believe for a moment that you had trouble making friends, Jean," Hank says.

"It's true!" Jean says. "Before I came here, I... well, I was different then. And that's how everybody at my old school remembers me, I'm sure. And now that they know I'm a Mutant, well..." She cuddles closer to Scott. "I'm not looking forward to going back there. You're lucky you get to stay here, Hank."

"Yes, I suppose Scott and I will have the dubious honor of being the only two graduates of this fine institution before it goes under. Let's see if any reputable college will have us."

"Hank, you know the whole Ivy League will want to roll out the red carpet for you," I say.

"Looking like this?" He tugs on his furry face. "I'll remember you said that in a few months when the rejection letters start coming in."

I hear Bobby's voice in the darkness. "Look what I found."

We all turn around to look at him. The fire gleams off a big bottle of something.

"What is that?" Jean asks.

"Vodka," Bobby says. "I may have nicked it from Mr. Eisenhardt's room."

"Bobby, that's stealing!" Scott says. "Go put it back."

"What, you think he's coming back for it? Come on. Half our teachers are invading the Congo. The government wants to number us and God knows what else. Our school's on its last legs and according to our psychic former English teacher, if we ever see each other again we're all going to die. It's Holy Thursday, and we just had our last supper. We should drink this. Scott, you in particular should drink this." Bobby takes a swig right from the bottle, makes a face, and spits it back out on the grass. We all burst out laughing.

"You've never had it before, have you?" Hank asks.

"Have you ever had rubbing alcohol?" Bobby asks.

"No."

"Well, that makes one of us, I guess." Bobby smacks his lips and stares at the bottle in disgust. "Ugh. I want to be drunk, but I don't want to drink this."

"Why do you want to be drunk?" Jean asks.

"I don't know," Bobby says. "Isn't that what adults do when they feel sad and don't want to think about their problems? Seems to work for them."

"Clearly it doesn't," I say. "Who wants to be like an adult, anyway? Those idiots are the ones who made a mess of the world. Seems to me like whatever an adult would do, we should do the opposite."

"Put the vodka back, Bobby," Jean says gently. "Lorna won't like it if she finds out you've taken something from her father's room."

Bobby slumps over and looks down at his feet. "There's almost nothing in there, anyway. The police really ransacked the place."

"Even so."

He tucks the bottle in his jacket and we watch him head back up to the house.

"Do you think Miss Adler really was right about that?" Jean asks. "All that stuff about Cape Kennedy?"

"Please don't talk about that," Hank says, "or I'll have to call Bobby back out with that vodka."

"I don't see how she could be right," I say. "Most of our parents are pulling us out of here for good."

"Well, she's been right about everything else," Scott says. "She sees the future. She knows what's going to happen."

Hank takes one of those deep breaths he takes when he's getting ready to pontificate. "Perhaps we'll all go to Florida because she told us we would. Mr. Eisenhardt will go after the nuclear weapons, and we ordinarily wouldn't think it was our responsibility to stop him, or even that we _could_ stop him if we wanted to, but Miss Adler put the idea in our heads, so off we go."

"Oh Christ, are you people still talking about that?" Bobby comes back and pulls his chair away from mine before sitting down. "All this prophecy gobbledegook gives me a headache."

" 'You lied to me,' " Jean murmurs.

"No, I didn't," Bobby says.

"No... that's what Mr. Eisenhardt said to Miss Adler. 'You lied to me.' What if she's lying to us? Or what if she's just _wrong_ , and she only pretended that she lied? What if we don't go to Florida at all? What if we don't even try to stop him?"

"But we've got to," Scott says. "Like she said, we can't just let him get the bomb."

"Well, maybe we don't fight him like she said we would," Jean says. "Maybe you don't shoot your eye beams. Maybe we don't try to disarm the bomb. Maybe we don't work together at all. We could stop him in a different way."

"And maybe that ends up being even worse!" Scott leaps to his feet and starts pacing, as angry and animated as I've ever seen him. "I try to figure this out, and for the life of me I just can't, and it just makes me sick. What if we go there and everything turns out the way she said it would and we all die? What if we don't go there and Mr. Eisenhardt gets the bomb and we bomb him and he bombs us and the Russians bomb everybody, and that's how the world ends? What if we go and... and we stop him and nobody dies, and we're all so proud of ourselves, but it turns out somehow _that_ was the wrong thing to do? Because we never know, do we? Not really. Maybe we'll go through life thinking we were heroes and then in fifty years our kids will look back on us and say, 'Boy, those idiots really made a mess of the world.' " He collapses back in his seat, and winces a little, and Jean rubs his back.

"How can you know what to do?" he continues, more quietly. "How does anybody do anything?"

"Well..." Hank says, "I suppose you've just go to do the best you can and endure the uncertainty."

We sit in silence for a while.

"We can't let him get the bomb," Scott says again.

Bobby holds the vodka bottle aloft. "Next year in Florida!"

"You said you were putting it back," Jean says.

"Professor X and Dr. M were in the kitchen and I didn't want to try and sneak it past them. Plus, this conversation makes me want to give drunkenness a second chance."

"I'll drink to that," I say. He passes me the bottle and I take as big a gulp as I can stand. It burns my throat and makes my eyes water, but I manage not to make a face. I imagine in this bad light, I look like a real drinker.

Jean walks over, takes the bottle from me, and sips a little herself. "To enduring the uncertainty."

We toast with our pop bottles and pass the vodka around. Even Scott grudgingly takes a little sip. Sometime around ten, the professor telepathically calls us back inside, so we stomp out the fire and trudge back through the dewy grass. Bobby's walking a little behind the rest of us, so I slow down to talk with him.

"Hey. So... why don't we keep in touch after we both leave here? Send each other letters and talk on the telephone and all that?" I ask.

"I'll think about it," Bobby says. He doesn't sound like he plans to think about any of it.

I clear my throat. "Look, Bobby, why have you been giving me the cold shoulder?"

"Cold shoulder. That's funny."

"I didn't mean for it to be funny. We used to be friends. Did I do something wrong? Because if I did, I'm sorry. I do want to keep in touch. You're a cool guy, and I like you."

I can't see Bobby's face in the dark, but I hear him turn his head to look at me, and when he talks, his voice is a bit less cold. "Yeah sure, I'll send you a postcard," he says.

I let out a relieved sigh. "I'll miss being able to stretch my wings when I go back to wearing my harness."

"Why go back?" Bobby asks. "Doesn't everybody know by now? Or won't they know once you register?"

"Probably, but knowing is one thing. Seeing them is another. And my dad'll really let me have it if I don't wear it."

"Throw it out, then," Bobby says, suddenly angry. "What do they want from us, anyway? They want to know exactly who we are, but they don't ever want to see us. And you've got the last gift anybody would want to hide. It isn't worth the effort, not by a long shot. You know, I've got some friends back home and in the city, friends that aren't Mutants, and they don't get it at all. Everything that's going on, with the MRA and the Congo and all of it, and all they want to talk about is the stupid Beatles. Well, who cares about that at a time like this?"

"That's for sure." I pick at a thread in my jacket. "I miss Wanda. Sometimes I think I ought to talk to her about this Mutant Congo situation or the presidential primaries, and then I remember. I don't know why she left. I mean, I sort of know. Family loyalty is so important to her. But I guess I didn't see her as the type of person who'd throw her lot in with... well, the type of people she threw her lot in with."

"I miss Morty," Bobby says. "Do you think he meant what he said? That I just put up with him? Do you think if I'd been a better friend, he wouldn't have gone?"

We reach the light of the porch. "I don't know. He was a tough nut to crack. He didn't talk much, and it's hard to be friends with somebody like that."

"I think..." Bobby bites his lip. "I think it was his looks too, if you want to know the truth. He looked funny, he smelled funny... I didn't want to be around him too much, usually. Does that make me a hypocrite?"

"Yeah, probably. We're all hypocrites, I think."

I shoot Bobby a grin, and he laughs, and I laugh too, because what else can you do? And when I get back to my room, I take my harness out from the back of my closet and I ditch it.

* * *

"Where's your harness?"

Of course that's the first question my dad asks when he comes to pick me up. He never sounds angry when he's angry, only weary and sarcastic.

"I threw it out," I tell him.

"Oh. Was that before or after you destroyed your shirt?"

"I needed room for my wings."

"I should specify: did you destroy _all_ of your shirts, or just that one?"

"I didn't destroy anything."

"Those holes on your back tell a different story," he says.

"I have _wings_ , Dad. Great big giant ones. They've got to go somewhere."

"Yes, they've got to go in a harness. And it's a good thing I brought you another one, because I had a feeling this would happen." My father pulls another harness and hands it to me.

"No," I say.

"I'm sorry?" Now he's starting to sound angry, and that's pretty frightening.

I stand up straight and look him in the eye. I'm as tall as he is now, especially with my wings behind me. "I won't wear the harness, Dad. I won't wear it. It's painful and, and there's no point to it, and... and we were trying to do something here. We were trying to set an example for all Mutants. We were trying to change the world. And maybe we didn't do much of anything, but I still want to change the world, and you can't do that by hiding."

"The only reason I'm not going to smack you upside the head right now is because I was young once too, and I can tell you really think you're doing something," my father says. "But I can tell you from experience that you aren't. You say you want to change the world, but you only want to be where the action is. It used to be down south, so you wanted to be there. Now it's up here, so this is where you want to be. You only want to play the hero so long as it's exciting. You want the flash and the danger and the admiration.

"You say you want to change the world? Well, I've got news for you: changing the world, really changing it, isn't glamorous. It's keeping your head down and working hard, day after day, and never knowing whether you're making a lick of difference, except in hindsight. Nobody puts that on television, but it's the only thing that works. Dressing up like a fool and carrying on only attracts more hate. It _feels_ like it accomplishes something, and that's how you know it doesn't do a damn thing. Now put the harness on and get in the car. I won't hear another word on the matter. When we get home to Atlanta, we'll buy you new clothes, and take the cost out of your allowance. Am I making myself clear?"

This went so much better in my imagination. I feel my will crumble more and more as he goes on, and once he's done, all I can do is grumble, "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, _sir_."

"That's right."

I press my wings down, strap the harness down over them, and throw on my old trench coat. I can't believe I used to wear this everyday. None of it fits the way it used to.

As we carry my things out, I take one last look at my dorm room. Scott's side is still furnished, mine is bare.

"You finally get your own room again," I tell Scott as we leave. "I know you'll like that."

"I don't mind so much anymore," he says.

"Well, I'll call you."

"You too. Oh, and Warren?"

I turn around.

"See you in Florida."

I give him half a smile. "Yeah," I say. "See you there."

"What does that mean?" my father asks. " 'See you in Florida'?"

"It's an inside joke," I tell him.

We climb into the car, and the driver whisks us away to the airport. I look out the window at the trees and the rolling hills and the farms. I am completely lost.


	23. Stand By Me

**23\. Stand By Me**

 **Scott**

Two cars sit side by side on the bank of the Titicus Reservoir. One of them is empty and one of them is all fogged up, and I can't stop being surprised. I was surprised every time Jean called me over the past month, always in the middle of the night, always whispering into the receiver so she wouldn't wake up her parents or her sister. I was surprised when she decided to come all the way back down here to meet me, driving for a whole hour through the dark, even when I offered to drive up to where she was or meet her halfway in Poughkeepsie. I was surprised when she insisted that we meet at the dam because it was special, because it was ours. And I was surprised when she pulled up next to me and jumped out of the car, beaming, and threw her arms around me like she really missed me.

Even after five months of going steady, I'm still getting used to the idea that she really does feel about me the way I feel about her. And while I don't understand it, I've begun to accept it, and with that acceptance has come a sort of comfort around her. I speak more readily and more easily. I relax a bit.

We spend a long, long time in the backseat, lost in each other. We talk telepathically while our lips are busy elsewhere, but it's mostly "I missed you," "I love you," "I missed you," "I love you" on a loop. Nothing else has to be said, really. After a while we come up for air and she lies back in my arms. I brought a blanket and a thermos of tea, because it's a sort of ritual now, and even though it's late April, it still gets pretty cold at night, so we wrap ourselves in the blanket and sip the tea, and I breathe in the scent of her hair.

"You seem tired," Jean says.

"I haven't been getting much sleep lately."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't call you so often."

"No!" I almost shout, before feeling the familiar embarrassment flush through my cheeks. I gradually remember that she loves me, and it isn't terrible to admit that I want to talk to her on the phone. "No, that isn't the problem at all. It's Florida."

"Of course it is. But you know, the more I think on it, the more I'm convinced that she's wrong or lying and we won't have to go at all. Or I hope she is. I hate her attitude, this idea that everything's all set in stone and we're like trains on a track, headed in one direction with no choice in the matter. I can't stand it."

"You know I don't want to believe in it any more than you do," I say. "But Hank's been watching the news like a hawk, and well… you see the way things are headed."

"There's a big gap between Johnson talking tough and Mr. Eisenhardt coming back here to steal nuclear missiles."

"But it's getting more and more tense, especially with Khrushchev getting on board with the Mutant Congo. And those claims that they had a telepath in the room, brainwashing him."

"Now, that's just a rumor," Jean says.

"But people believe it. Johnson believes it, I think. Some time soon, tough talk's going to turn into tough action. Once Magneto believes that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons against him, well, he's got to defend himself, hasn't he? And how's he going to do that without nuclear weapons of his own, or the time to build them? He might as well just take some — then he'll have them, his enemy won't, and they'll be terrified to boot. And where's the closest stockpile to the Mutant Congo? Cape Kennedy, of course. Even if Miss Adler is wrong, this is all shaping up like she said it would. And I keep trying to come up with some sort of strategy, and it keeps me awake at night because it's almost worse if we _do_ have a choice. Because if we can't do anything to change the future, then nothing's really our fault, is it? We were never going to succeed. But if there's a chance we could stop him and we fail anyway, well that's _really_ unbearable.

"I don't want to cause any more deaths, Jean. Not even Magneto's and, God, certainly not yours."

Jean twists around to look at me, propping herself up on her elbow. "Listen to me, Scott. You aren't responsible for everybody's life. If we decide we're going to go down there, that's our decision. But for what it's worth, I trust you. I know you'll come up with something brilliant and together we'll save the day because as bad as things can get, sometimes good things do happen. Maybe with Lorna there, we can talk Mr. Eisenhardt down, and it'll never even come to fighting."

"I don't know how likely that is," I say. "And why are you still calling him Mr. Eisenhardt? He calls himself Magneto now."

"He's still Mr. Eisenhardt. Deep down, underneath all that hurt, he's still our teacher. He still just wants to keep his kids safe, and help Mutants. I'm sure of it. He's just a little confused as to how to go about it. And he's seen so many terrible things that he believes the worst about everybody now… but I won't give up on him."

"Jean, he's killed people — a lot of people, now. I don't know exactly how many, but just the other day — you must have heard about it — he was there in Stanleyville, personally cutting down those Simba rebels. He's an assassin, and a conqueror. He's a bad guy."

Jean sighs and leans back against my chest. "One thing you learn from being a telepath… there's no such thing as bad guys. Everybody either thinks they're doing the right thing, or their rage overwhelms them, or their fear… but almost nobody sets out just to hurt people. Mr. Eisenhardt says he's doing what he's doing for the greater good, and I'm positive he believes it. Isn't it a nice thought, a country just for Mutants? A place where we can all be safe? What wouldn't you do to protect that? He's drawn the line in a certain place — he thought about it, and decided to draw it there, he came to decide that this is where the line ought to be. And if he decided that, then he can decide to draw it somewhere else. We can persuade him of it."

"After everything he's done, maybe he's too far gone," I say.

"Nobody's too far gone. Everybody deserves a second chance, Scott. Everybody." From the way she's squeezing my hand, I've got a feeling we aren't just talking about Magneto anymore. "When the time comes, call me and I'll come running. I don't care if I have to miss school, I don't care if my parents lose their minds and get the authorities to comb the nation looking for me. I'll stand with you, no matter what. If it's at all possible to fight this — if anybody at all can come up with a plan to stop this — it's you."

I cup her face in my hands and kiss her with all the passion I can muster. "I don't deserve you."

"Yes, you do. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

* * *

I manage to stay awake through the next day's classes. Not that we have such formal classes anymore. With so many of the teachers gone, we've started relying pretty heavily on correspondence courses, but Professor Xavier thinks it's important that we keep up some kind of consistent routine.

That afternoon, Hank wakes me from my nap with a gentle rapping on the door.

"C'm 'n," I murmur, pulling my sleep mask off and putting on my glasses.

Hank's great, hairy form fills the door frame. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were taking a nap."

"It's all right. What's going on?"

"It's time."

My stomach drops. Hank wrings his enormous hands, shakily making his way over to my chest of drawers. He starts nervously fiddling with one of the model airplanes I've got arrayed on top of it — a Silverplate B-29 Boeing Superfortress. "Johnson's threatening to send U.S. troops into the Congo."

"What precisely did he say?"

"Well, he was talking about all those Mutants streaming into the Congo on Magneto's invitation. He said that most of them are American citizens fleeing before the registration date hits — which, of course, is true — and therefore can and should be repatriated, registered, and tried under American laws. There was a lot of talk of renegade states and some crocodile tears for the Congolese, but that's not the important part. The important part is this: he said the use of nuclear weapons against Léopoldville is not out of the question. I don't know when, or indeed if, Magneto will make his move, but this is precisely the sort of thing that would push his hand. If it happens at all, it will happen soon."

As he speaks, Hank is gripping the Superfortress more and more tightly in his sweaty paws.

"Please be careful with that," I say.

He puts it back in its proper place as carefully as he can. "I'm sorry."

"No, don't apologize — you can touch any of those planes, but that one, well... my father flew one like it during the war. Just please be careful with it."

Hank looks at me curiously. I realize that I've never mentioned either of my parents to him, or to much of anyone besides the professor and Jean.

"What was he like? Your father. If you don't mind me asking."

I take a sharp breath. "He was a hero. So. If we wait for Mag — for Mr. Eisenhardt to make his move, by the time we hear about it, it'll probably be too late for us to get down to Florida. We should leave soon, I suppose. Get down there, get us a room at some cheap motel near the base, have Warren do aerial reconnaissance… and we wait, for as long as it takes, which hopefully isn't long."

"And how will we pay for these plane tickets and this motel room?" Hank asks. "You think the professor will allow this, much less bankroll it?"

I allow myself half a grin. "It's our destiny, isn't it? He's got to. But we ought to talk to him and Lorna about it now. If you're right about this, we haven't got much time."

Hank and I head downstairs. The professor is holed up in his study as he so often is these days, wearing that funny-looking helmet that connects to the Cerebro device Mr. Eisenhardt left behind. Lorna sits opposite him, watching and looking worried.

She's been acting withdrawn and strange this past month. She doesn't ever want to hear about her father or the Congo, and will abruptly leave the room if someone mentions it, or if news of it comes on the radio or the TV. But she'll beg Professor Xavier to find her father and siblings with Cerebro and tell her where they are. One day she dyed her hair brown and insisted on going by her mother's maiden name, Dehne. But she wouldn't admit that this had anything to do with her father.

Hank has tried to talk with her about it but whenever he does, she changes the subject to continental drift. She's become obsessed with it all of a sudden, this sort of crackpot geological theory about how the continents move around and crash into each other, and this is what causes earthquakes. It's no surprise, Hank says, that with all these changes in her life she would become convinced that even the earth itself can't be trusted to stay put beneath her feet. As for me, I never know what to say to her, or how I could help things. I'd probably just make her feel worse if I tried.

Professor Xavier takes the helmet off and sighs. "He designed this, and now I use it primarily to track his movements. Anyway. The Mutant army seems to have pushed the Simbas back as far as Paulis. They've got almost the entire country united under Mutant control now, except for that little northeastern corner. Your father's with the troops up there, but Wanda and Pietro are still safe in the Governor-General residence. They look to be heavily guarded and extremely bored."

Lorna sighs in relief, and seems almost content until she notices Hank and me hovering in the doorway.

"Excuse us, Professor. Lorna," Hank says. "But have you heard what Johnson said today?"

"Yes." The professor says, looking tired. He always looks tired lately.

Lorna abruptly rises from her seat. "I don't want to hear it," she says, and starts to leave the room.

Hank holds out one gigantic hand. "Please, Lorna, this concerns you as well. I understand it hurts, but you've got to hear this."

"Professor, if… if he's going to do what Miss Adler said he'd do, it could be any day now," I say. "And I know it sounds crazy, but Hank and I have been talking — and Jean and Bobby, over the telephone, we've all been talking, and we've come up with a sort of plan. But we can't do it without you. And if we are going to go — and I really think we ought to — we've got to go now."

Professor Xavier absently runs a finger up and down one metal panel of the helmet. "Scott, do you really think I'd be acting in the best interest of this school, or the few students in it, if I were to whisk you away on a field trip of indeterminate length and questionable educational value with the sole purpose of waiting for an event which, according to our only source of information on the matter, will certainly kill us all? Not even to mention the involvement of minors who are no longer students at this school and whose parents have made it quite clear that they don't want their children placed in any more danger. Would you have me effectively kidnap them so they might engage in a battle over nuclear missiles?"

"Well, of course it sounds bad when you put it like that," Hank says.

"It's crazy," I say. "I know it's crazy. This whole situation is, but I don't care anymore. If we have even a chance of stopping him — of averting a nuclear war — we've got to try. We're his students, his daughter, his friend. Maybe he'll listen to us."

"He never listened to me before."

"Well, it's worth a shot, isn't it?" I explode. "How will you feel if nuclear war breaks out, knowing you could have done something to stop it and you didn't?"

He looks down at his lap. "I would never forgive myself," he says quietly.

"Then you know what you've got to do," I say. I turn to Lorna. "And you too, Lorna. If anyone can convince him to back down, it's you. If nothing else, your gift can counteract his. Please, Lorna."

Lorna bites her lip, her eyes moist and pointed somewhere in the direction of Hank's arm. "I don't like what I saw in my father the last time I saw him. I don't particularly want to see it again. Especially if I'm going to die."

"if we do nothing, we're all likely to die anyway, and a lot more people besides," I say. "No matter how you cut it, this is what we've got to do. And it'll probably be the most important thing any of us do in our entire lives." I take a deep breath. "Look, Lorna… I'm sorry if I sound harsh. I've never been in your position. All I'll say is, it's lousy. You know it's lousy and I know it's lousy, but your father is still alive, and the man he was is still in there, and as long as that's true, there's hope that you'll be able to reach him."

Lorna twists the ends of her sweater around and around in her fingers. Hank lays a massive arm around her shoulders, and something seems to break inside her. "Fine, I'll go."

I look to the professor. He nods.

"All right, let's all of us get packed," I say. "Professor, could you call around to the nearest airports and get us tickets on the next flight to Cocoa Beach? And a motel room around that area, too? I'll call Jean and pick her up to take her to the airport. Hank, you call Bobby and do the same for him. I guess I'll call Warren too, but he'll have to find his own way there."

"Should we take Dr. MacTaggert along?" Hank asks. "She at least ought to know."

"When the police come looking for Jean and Bobby and Warren, somebody will have to answer the door," the professor says. "And it's best if she genuinely doesn't know where we are. Let's do this quietly."

"I sure hope you know what you're doing, Scott," Lorna says.

So do I.

* * *

I listen to the phone ring, ready to hang up if one of Warren's parents picks up. But soon I hear Warren's voice on the other end of the line.

"Hello?"

"How quickly can you fly to Cocoa Beach?"

There's a long silence. "Oh Lord, are you _still_ planning to go through with that whole mess?"

"As soon as possible. So what do you say — can we count on the Avenging Angel?"

"I told you, Scott, I'm done with all that stuff. This… the whole Avenging Angel thing… it was childish. I just wanted action and attention. Putting on a mask and flying around isn't how you save the world. If anybody's going to stop Magneto from starting a nuclear war, it'll be a bunch of diplomats and politicians and engineers, all quiet and anonymous, not some kids with weird powers."

"Unless they fail. Because those diplomats and politicians and engineers have been at it all this time, and they _haven't_ saved the world. It's like you said back at the bonfire: they've only made a mess of it. And I'm tired of standing by and watching the world get worse and worse and not doing anything about it. Look, Warren, Mr. Eisenhardt was right about one thing: we could use our gifts to do great things for the world, and what's more, we've got a responsibility to. If nothing else, we ought to use them to protect ordinary people from Mutants like him, who want to hurt them. We're the only ones who can. All of us have a responsibility to do whatever we can to do good, I think, and this is what we can do. The world needs you, Warren. We need you. We need an Avenging Angel."

I hear a sigh. "Jesus, Scott… if you really believe that Miss Adler's right about Magneto attacking that base, then why don't you believe the end of that prediction? She said we'd all die. Either way, we can't do anything to change what's happening."

"I can't believe that," I say. "I've got to believe that the choices we make in life mean something. I've got to believe that we've got some sort of control over the things we do. Because if we don't — if we're all just trains on a track heading in a certain direction no matter how much we want to stop — well, then what's the point of any of it? What's the point of being here at all, if we're all just going through the motions? And all right, so maybe I'm fated to believe that too, and then whatever I believe, it won't matter. We'll all end up in Florida somehow, and we'll all end up dead. But even if we're doomed to fail, it still matters that we fought. And if she's wrong… if we've got a chance of stopping this… well, then that changes everything, doesn't it?"

There's another long silence, and I rush to fill it before Warren comes up with a retort. "Sea Aire Motel. North Atlantic Avenue. Room 16. I hope to see you before the end."


	24. We Will All Go Together When We Go

**24\. We Will All Go Together When We Go**

 **Bobby**

Everybody makes such a big deal about Florida, but it's a whole lot crumbier than you'd think. In the first place, it's as hot and humid as a sauna, and it's driving me batty. I don't normally pay much attention in science class, but Dr. M told me how my gift works, and that stuff I remember. See, heat is _fast_. Heat is everything, all the air molecules and stuff, spinning around like crazy people. What I do is, I slow it all down, and that makes it cold. But I can't slow it down because there's too much, too fast, and it makes me want to throw up.

In the second place, we're all packed like sardines in a little motel room, all six of us, and we're not allowed to spend too much time out in public because then people might see us. Honestly, it's not so bad, really, as motel rooms go. We've got an air conditioner that would probably work all right if it wasn't Florida, and a kitchenette, and two full beds — one that the boys have to share and one for Jean and Lorna — and Professor X got a roll-away bed to sleep on so we get a little more room in the bed, even if it means less room to walk around. It's just that we can hardly ever leave that makes it unbearable. That, and having to share a bed with Scott and Hank is just miserable. You forget how big Hank is, and how hot his fur is, until you're crammed in a bed with him and it's already so hot. I know it isn't his fault and all, but it's hard not to feel resentful when he's taking up most of the bed and Scott and I have to cling to either edge. Then I wake up grouchy, and after four nights of that and being stuck in this little room and not really allowed to go outside, the whole situation's making me pretty sore.

But the worst part is being trapped in a confined space with Lorna, who still hates me, I'm pretty sure. Wait, I take that back: the _real_ worst part is that we've been here almost a week and there's still no sign of Warren, or even any sign that he's going to come. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed about that, if you want to know the truth. He makes me feel so confused. I think in a way I'm here because of him, because I saw his heroics in Birmingham last year — which feels like so much longer ago than it really was — and it made me want to be a hero, too. So it's sort of a let-down, him not being here. But at the same time, he stirs up all kinds of feelings in me that I'd rather not think about. I've seen where feelings like those get people. I've been down to the Christopher Street piers — just a couple times, just to look — and I've seen boys my age whose parents kicked them out, and they hang around under the elevated highway, selling themselves or just giving themselves away to truck drivers and nervous businessmen. I don't want that to be me. I don't want to skulk around in dark alleys and get arrested and beaten. It's a lonely, terrible kind of life, at least that's how it seems to me. It's lonely enough being a Mutant — at least I found a little acceptance for that here. There's no place like Xavier's school for a homosexual anywhere in the world.

And I tried a little with Lorna, to see if maybe I could like a girl, but I couldn't and I just messed everything up. And as awful as it is to be near Lorna and get reminded of my failure, it would be even worse for Warren to be here too, especially if I've got to share a crowded bed with him. I know how he feels about… about homosexuals — how just about everybody feels about homosexuals except homosexuals themselves. Ourselves. Sometimes I think they're the only kind of person that people hate more than Mutants. So I don't really want to be anywhere near him, but I still go outside sometimes when it's dark and all the beachcombers have gone home and watch the sky for him, just in case. He makes me so twisted up inside, I can't stand it. I don't know if I'm coming or going, and if this is love, then I don't want any part of it.

So anyway, like I said, we're all in this motel room, all of us except Jean and Professor X, who put on psychic disguises and went off to buy groceries, but the rest of us are just sitting around the stuffy old room, and there's not even a TV set to watch or anything. I bought a paperback to read — some corny detective pulp — but it's too hot to concentrate and I can just _feel_ Lorna over on her bed, being miserable, and it makes me miserable too.

"Is that lousy air conditioner even on?" I snap.

Hank's stretched out in front of it, reading a guide booklet for a self-driving tour of Cape Kennedy that we picked up from the motel office. He lifts his head up. "It is, believe it or not. It's weak, but it works."

"Why don't you make a block of ice?" Scott suggests. "We can put it in a baking pan, and park it in front of the fan. It should help a little, and anyway, you've got to practice using your gift for when Magneto shows up."

"When Magneto shows up? _When_ Magneto shows up? It's been five days, Scott. Five days of waiting around for that lunatic, and I'm half-cracked. I don't even know why I let you talk me into coming down here to begin with. The only word we've got that he'll be here also said he'd kill us all, and let me tell you, if Magneto doesn't kill me, my parents sure will."

"Then why don't you just go?" Lorna shouts. "Go back to Long Island if you don't wanna be here, because I'm sick and tired of hearing you complain about it."

"Well, he's _your_ dad; why don't you just call him up and tell him to get a move on?"

The room gets heavy all of a sudden, and it isn't just the humidity. Without saying a word, Lorna storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Now I've really done it. I run out after her. The door opens right onto the beach, and it's a bright and sunny day. All around us there are kids laughing and playing and their parents are reading under umbrellas and it makes me feel so ridiculous. I wish it was dark or raining or something, and we were all alone out there. I catch up to her.

I catch up to her. "Hey, I'm sorry. We oughta go back inside before somebody recognizes us," I say quietly.

"I don't think anybody'll recognize me with brown hair," she says. She doesn't even turn around to look at me when she says that; she just keeps stomping through the sand.

"Maybe they will. They'll probably recognize me; I was on TV."

"So go back inside, then."

"I don't want to go back inside. I made you upset, and I feel badly about that."

"Well, you've got a funny way of showing it!" She spins around and glares at me, her hair whipping around in the salty breeze. "Don't you try and make me feel better, Bobby Drake, because you're terrible at it and you're about the last person I want to see right now anyway."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry about your family. My family stinks too, if that makes a difference. Why would that make a difference? Okay, listen, if you want to punch me in the face, you can — I can take it, and I probably deserve it. I know I was a lousy excuse for a boyfriend, and what am I doing reminding you of that at a time like this? Punch me in the face. Please. You know what, there are those people who use metal detectors on the beach and they find all kinds of metal things underneath the sand; I bet you could pull some of that stuff up and throw it at my head, you could really get me good. Jeese, I really am terrible at this. I don't know how to do any of this. I don't know how to talk about… him." I look around at all the people in bathing suits. They're mostly ignoring us. "I don't know how you feel about him, because you're here, and if you're here, then you must be planning to face him, and if you're planning to face him, then you must be okay with me talking about him, right?"

Lorna's got her arms wrapped around herself like it's cold, even though it's hot. She looks down and kicks the sand. "It wasn't that you were talking about him, it was the _way_ you were… oh, I don't know. I'm just tired of all this fighting. I want him to come to his senses, and I want us to move back to the Bronx and be a family again. And I know that isn't going to happen, but I don't know what else to hope for." She starts to cry. "Sometimes I want to change my name and move to, I don't know, California or something, and never use my gift, and tell everybody my whole family died in a plane crash. But then I remember I'll have to get registered, and that means I'll never really be able to leave all this behind me. People will always know who I am, and they'll always hate me."

Lorna's crying so much, her nose is running, and the tears and the snot all mix in together. She wipes her face with the back of her arm and snorts like a little kid. I didn't think girls did that sort of thing, or had snot at all, really. I sort of want to hug her, but I don't want to give her the wrong impression, and anyway I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to be touched. So I stick my hands in my pockets and try to look on the bright side for her. "They might not always hate us. Maybe if we save the world from nuclear annihilation, they'll be grateful to us. They'll be grateful to _you_ — you'll show them all that you aren't like your father. Maybe we can even get that stupid registration act repealed."

Lorna purses her lips and nods. "I don't know if I can do this," she says.

"I don't think anybody ever does know for sure," I say. "You've just got to go ahead and do it, and hope you've got it in you. I mean, I can't even cool down a motel room, and Scott expects me to — what, freeze a nuclear missile?"

"You can cool it down," Lorna says, wiping her eyes with her palms. "You never really tried to — you tried a little and got frustrated and gave up. But you've got more power than you think you do. If you really tried, you could do it."

"Wanna go back to the room and find out?"

"Sure."

We trudge back through the stupid sunshine and the stupid happy people and when we get back in the room, Scott and Hank pretend not to notice us. I close the door and close my eyes. I can feel all the air molecules flying around, making it hot. It makes me dizzy to concentrate on it, but I've got to. And then I realize that if I want to calm down the air, I've got to calm myself down first. I can't slow down air molecules if I'm spinning around in my own head. So I take a deep breath and I try to slow myself down. I make everything slow: my breath, my heartbeat, my thoughts. I've got to be cool. However I'm feeling about Warren, or Lorna, or myself, I've got to put that away. I don't have to worry about how they'll think of me if they find out. They'll never know. Nobody has to know. I'm the only one who has to accept me. So I don't have to worry, or think about it, or think about anything, really. I put it away, I breathe in and out, and slow it all down, and soon I feel the temperature dropping.

When I exhale, it comes out in a fog. And when I open my eyes again, all the water droplets that were making the room so humid have turned into snow. Scott and Hank and even Lorna are looking up at the snow coming down from the ceiling like little kids, laughing and stretching their arms wide and sticking out their tongues to catch the flakes. Soon enough, I'm laughing too. I can't do much, but I can do this. I can cool things down just a little bit, and maybe that's enough.

"It's time," says a voice from behind me. I turn to look; Professor X and Jean are in the doorway. They don't have any groceries, just grim expressions on their faces. They've been scanning for Mutants in the area all week, but somehow I didn't expect them to finally find something now. For the first time since we got here, I get chills.

We all pile into the rental car, quiet and calm like in a trance. Jean uses her telepathy to make Hank look mostly like he used to, so as not to draw attention. It's a terrible strain on her, so she can't do it often, which is why Hank's had to spend the whole week inside the room. Well, let me tell you, he wasn't too happy about that, not only on account of the heat, but also because he thought he might have the opportunity to hobnob with some astronauts, being in Cocoa Beach and all.

"Well, Hank, you might finally get your chance to meet an astronaut," I tell him as we squeeze into the backseat.

"I daresay we'll be too busy for that," Hank says. "But if we do manage to save the world, I bet astronauts will line up to meet _us_!"

We both chuckle a little, but it's kind of half-hearted. We're scared — all of us are. Lorna's white as a ghost, staring blankly at the back of the professor's head.

"This is it," she murmurs. "This is where we die."

I'm struggling to think of something to tell her to make her feel better, and then I remember that Tom Lehrer album she gave me for my birthday. "Well," I say weakly, "at least we'll all go together when we go."

She snaps out of it, and looks at me, and almost smiles. "You still listen to that?"

"It's my favorite record," I say.

She makes a laugh that's kind of a sob, or a sob that's kind of a laugh, and I squeeze her hand, and it's enough to make me think that maybe if we survive this, we could be friends.

"So, Professor, who else did you detect besides Magneto?" Scott asks as he pulls us out of the motel parking lot.

"That's the odd thing," Professor X says. "I don't sense him here at all, only several Mutants known to be affiliated with him. Three of the men who helped him break out of Rikers Island are there — the ones called Vanisher, Mesmero, and Peepers."

"Oh, great. The guys who took down a bunch of professional jail guards. Us kids against those guys." I only realize after I've finished saying it that that was a terrible thing to say, that I've just made everybody feel even worse, but I can't help it; I get sarcastic when I'm nervous.

"I'm confident we've got the muscle to stop them," Scott says.

"Whatever you say, Slim," I say. That stringbean wouldn't know muscle if it — oh, there I go again. Somebody ought to tape my mouth shut.

"Those aren't the only Mutants I've detected," Professor X continues, lowering his voice. "Your former classmates who defected with him are also here."

That gets Lorna's attention. "Does that include Wanda and Pietro?"

"I'm afraid so."

She turns her face to the window. Hank throws a big arm around her, and I wonder if he still feels furry even if he doesn't look it.

"Why would he send a bunch of kids here?" Jean asks. "He was so adamant about protecting them before."

"I suspect he thinks he needs all the help he can get," the professor says. "And they aren't merely 'kids,' after all; they're highly gifted Mutants. We've already seen Jason use his abilities to help conquer the Congo."

Jean twists around from the front seat. "I know it'll be hard to face your family, Lorna, but isn't it better to face them than these other Mutants we don't know? As painful as it is, we've got a real shot at stopping Wanda and Pietro without resorting to violence."

"I only wish Warren were here," Scott says. "We could use an eye in the sky."

"Maybe I could help with that," Jean says.

"Why, you got a secret pair of wings you never told us about?" I ask.

"No… but, well, I've been thinking. I can use my telekinesis to lift all kinds of things into the air, and I've lifted things heavier than myself. So why couldn't I lift _myself_ , if I really concentrated on it? I couldn't fly like Warren, exactly — at least, I don't think I could — but I could do something like it."

"Don't strain yourself too much, dear," Professor X says. "We'll need your telepathy at full strength. Only test the limits of your gift if we absolutely need someone who can fly."

Jean leans back in her seat and looks out the window. "Yes, Professor," she mutters.

We head up the coast to Cape Kennedy just like any other tourists. Hank reads off the map on the back of his guide book while the professor scans the area to figure out where exactly the Mutants are. We're almost at the lighthouse when Professor X points to the left and shouts, "There! Three of them are at that launch complex."

Scott pulls the car over. "Only three of them?" he asks.

"Yes — the three from Rikers Island. Your former classmates are elsewhere on the base, somewhere northwest of here. And there's still no sign of Magneto."

"There's no sign of _anyone_ ," Hank points out, squinting across the field. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Jean, do you think you could zero in on the others' locations, like the professor did?" Scott asks.

"I think so."

"Okay, the professor and Hank and I will stay here. Jean, you drive Bobby and Lorna to wherever the others are. If we've got to split up, we ought to have a telepath on both teams. And..." his voice cracks, "it's best if we don't work together."

Jean nods, and for a minute I'm afraid they're going to go all corny and make a big scene, but Scott just says, "Good girl," and helps Professor X out of the car.

Hank hands me the guide booklet and points to the map. "We're right here, at the Minuteman complex. Make sure you always know where you are, so you'll know how to get back to us. Good luck." He wraps his arms around me, and yep, he still feels furry even though his skin looks smooth. That doesn't last long, though; I watch him and Scott take off across the field, Hank pushing Professor X in his wheelchair, and as they get further away, Jean's psychic disguise wears off.

Jean scoots over to the driver's seat and pulls us back onto the road, following her psychic intuition or whatever telepaths have. We've driven all the way up the coast, or at least as far up the coast as the road'll take us, and we're turning the corner to head back south when I catch a silver blur rushing in front of the car. Jean slams on the brakes, and in an instant Pietro's standing there with his hands on the hood and a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

Lorna jumps out of the car and runs right up to him. "Where's Dad?" she demands.

Pietro hugs her. "What did you do to your hair?"

"Dyed it. You like it?"

"It looks mousy and boring. You should have stayed with green. So I guess you're all here to throw your lives away to make sure the Mutant state has no means of self-defense?"

That's Pietro for you, always the charmer.

"Where. Is. Dad."

He examines Lorna with those, quick sharp eyes of his for a couple of seconds, though for him it probably feels like a long time. "You don't know?" The smirk is back. "Dad hasn't gotten here yet. He sent us ahead of him, to set everything up. He'll be here soon, though. Let me take you to Wanda; we should talk."

"Can we come too?" I ask, waving my arm out the window.

"No," he says.

"Pietro, we want to talk too," Jean says. "As a matter of fact, that's all we really want to do. We don't want to resort to violence anymore than you do, but just the same, we're not leaving."

He gives it a split-second's thought. "Sure, fine. Come to the Central Control building."

Lorna gets back in the car.

 _He's lying,_ Jean thinks at us. _Magneto is here, right now. He's just found some way to cloak himself from telepaths. Pietro's trying to distract us._

My stomach churns. "What do we do?"

 _Play it cool. I have an idea. And please speak to me telepathically. We don't want them knowing any more than they have to._

Jean stops the car next to a bunch of buildings, and it seems about the worst place to stop because there are people everywhere — airmen and engineers and guards and all — but the crazy part is, they don't seem to notice us at all.

 _Jason's here,_ Jean says, stepping out of the car. _He's creating the illusion that everything here is normal, so we're cloaked too — for now. God only knows what this place_ really _looks like._

 _Is that why the professor couldn't detect my father?_ Lorna asks, sounding half hopeful and half anxious. _Because Jason hid him?_

 _I don't think so. Jason can make only things_ appear _normal. I can still sense him, and Professor Xavier is more powerful than I am._

Lorna and I follow her out of the car and into Central Control. It's bustling with people, including guards and military men, but they all let us pass by without a glance. I mean, they don't notice us wandering into their top-secret base (that is, I assume it's top-secret); it's like something out of _The Twilight Zone_. So we make our way into the real heart of it, I mean the big room with all kinds of fancy machinery where everything happens. And I don't know why we can see it, if Jason somehow made sure that other Mutants could see through his illusion or if Jean broke through it for all of us, but it's a real scene. Wanda's short-circuited all the machinery, just zapping at everything with little red bolts. All the workers are sitting calmly at their broken stations acting like little kids who are just pretending to be working. They don't know what's going on anywhere on the base, and I don't think they could shoot a missile if they tried, but they clearly don't know that.

Jason's just standing around, surveying his masterpiece with a smug grin on his face. And it occurs to me now that we never really came up with a plan going in, other than "let's talk them out of it," and I don't know how to do that. Morty's crouched on top of some big computer, squatting with his elbows on his knees. Jean and Lorna make a beeline for Wanda, and I figure I ought to talk to him, but I don't know what to say.

"I missed you, Jean," Jason says, and the way he says it is just so slimy it makes me want to take a shower. "I've been hoping you'd wise up and come to the Mutant Congo. It's nice there — warm, full of our kind… you don't have to worry about hiding your gift or registering with anyone."

"Give it a rest," Jean says. "Tell me where Magneto is. Now. When's this heist going to start?"

Jason grins. "Oh, I'll do more than tell you — I'll show you. Wanda, could you restore this bank of screens?"

Wanda zaps a couple of TV screens set into a wall, and they come to life again. I kind of recognize the scene — two little beehive-looking buildings, two launch platforms with all that metal scaffolding to hold up the missile, and lots of space in-between. I see Scott and Hank and Professor X wandering around.

And I see a couple things they don't: a giant bomber. The two officers in the firing rooms bound and gagged.

And a man floating above the launch platform. I don't recognize him at first, partly because the picture's black-and-white and blurry, partly on account of this shiny helmet that covers up most of his face. He's wearing what looks like real thin chain mail. I watch him rip the launching platform up with just a motion of his hands. There's an underground silo beneath it, and it's got a metal top that he tears right off.

And that's when I put two and two together.

"He's already here, and it's already started," Jason says, crossing his arms in satisfaction. "And you're all too late to do anything about it."


	25. Tender Warriors

**25\. Tender Warriors**

 **Lorna**

We just stare at those screens, frozen in place for what feels like an eternity.

Finally, Bobby breaks the silence: "Can _everybody_ fly but me?"

Jason crashes to the floor. Jean's voice booms in my head: _He's here! It's happening now!_ On the TV screens, I see Scott and Hank start and look around. So they can hear her too. How many people can she talk to at once? I turn to look at her. Her eyes are squeezed tight, her hands balled into fists, a vein pulsing in her forehead.

I'm standing next to a missileman at his console. He blinks wearily and gives a little shake of his head.

"What did you do?" Wanda demands, diving to check Jason's pulse.

"I didn't hurt him; he's just asleep," Jean says.

"What is…" the missileman murmurs, gazing around the room. "You people shouldn't…" His eyes widen and sharpen. "Holy Hannah — Mutants!"

He nearly falls out of his chair, and it seems to wake everyone else up.

"You idiots!" Wanda shouts, shooting off red bolts, frantically destroying all the equipment. "We were going to do this peacefully! They wouldn't even have known it was happening until the missiles were gone! Now they're going to bomb the Mutant Congo, and all that blood is on _your_ hands."

" _He's_ the idiot," Pietro says, kicking Jason's unconscious body. "He's the one who went and told them everything."

Guards rush in, pointing guns at us. My head is spinning, but I manage to think fast and fuse the metal together until their guns are nothing but toys. The next thing I know, they're all on the floor, restrained by their own handcuffs. As quickly as the workers here are jumping to attention, Pietro is whirring around the room tripping them, tying them up, grabbing them and holding them in place for Morty to spit some sort of quick-drying mucus at them. One minute a panicked secretary is reaching for the phone, and the next, the silk scarf that was around her neck is now over her eyes, her hands bound behind her back with her own typewriter ribbon. I'm sure he thinks this is all very funny.

"How can you blame _us_ for this?" I yell at Wanda. "You knew you were poking a bear. You knew that as soon as they found the missiles gone, they'd know it was Magneto and it would be war."

Wanda raises her eyebrows. "You're calling our father Magneto now? That's cold, Lorna."

"Isn't that what he said he wanted to be called? I thought you believed in his vision, that Mutant separatism kick, with the new names and everything. Isn't that important to you? Isn't that more important than American lives, or your little sister?"

Pietro and Morty have incapacitated all the regular humans here and are moving on to Bobby and Jean. Morty spits a huge wad of mucus at Bobby, who ducks and freezes it in the air. It falls to the floor, shattering.

"Don't act so superior," Wanda says. "You're the one who abandoned us, not the other way around."

 _How are you all doing with Magneto?_ I hear Jean ask.

"I didn't go anywhere!" I say. "I'm right where I ought to be! I didn't run away to invade some other country!"

 _I don't know how things are going over there, but we could sure use a little help over here,_ Hank says.

 _What is this, a party line?_ Bobby asks.

Pietro zips over to Wanda's side. "Leave her alone, Wanda. If she wants to get registered like a good little mutie, that's her choice. Isn't that right, Lorna? Just don't think you'll get special treatment for doing the Americans' bidding. They'll never trust Mutants. They'll turn on you no matter what."

 _We're on our way,_ Jean says.

"It's your country too, you know," I say.

Wanda shakes her head sadly. "It was never our country. I thought you'd have figured that out by now."

A wall of ice springs up between me and my siblings, thickening until I can no longer see their faces. I spin around to find Bobby and Jean behind me.

 _Lorna, come on, we've got to go,_ Bobby says, tugging at my hand.

"But they — I could've —" I claw at the ice wall. Could have what? I wasn't getting through to them. Maybe if I'd thought things through more, picked out just the right words, not let myself be ruled by my emotions, I could have changed their minds. Is it too late? Did I ruin my only chance? Did I ever have a chance at all?

 _Lorna, your father is stealing nuclear missiles_ right now _and you're the only one who can stop him. We've got to go,_ Jean says.

I take one last look at the blurry shadows behind the ice wall. We make a run for the doors, but in an instant, Pietro has jumped out from behind the wall and thrown a row of consoles in front of it to block our escape. But it's all metal. He knows that.

I grit my teeth and rip a hole through the makeshift barricade. Jean, Bobby, and I dash out the door, and I throw the barricade back up as soon as we're through. I turn around to see us surrounded by armed men.

Of course. This is a military base, Jason's not projecting his illusion anymore, and they have no reason to think that we're up to any good here.

 _LET US PASS,_ Jean bellows. It's not a request. It's a command, and it vibrates in my skull. All at once, the men lower their weapons and back away, leaving us an opening to race to the car.

Jean leaps into the driver's seat and Bobby and I jump in beside her. Her face is taut, her eyes wide and reddening with bursting blood vessels as she jams the key in the ignition and spins the car around, tires screeching. I'm a bit uneasy with what she just did, but one thing's sure: keeping Jason unconscious, controlling those guards, and keeping the lines of psychic communication open between all of us is taking its toll.

I clutch the dashboard as we speed back down the road to the Minuteman launch complex.

"No, wait — turn around and cut across that field!" Bobby shouts. "We can take the skid strip most of the way there. It'll be faster."

Jean swerves off the road and we're all knocked out of our seats. We hang on tight for the bumpy ride over the grass until we finally reach the long, wide, straight line of asphalt that must be the skid strip Bobby mentioned. It's another jostle getting onto it, but once all four wheels are on the strip, Jean hits the gas. I smell smoke and burning rubber, and the only other times I've gone this fast were all Pietro's fault. My stomach is somewhere in my throat, and Jean is hunched over the steering wheel looking like a woman possessed.

"Jean, are you okay?" I ask.

 _FINE,_ she snaps. _Don't talk to me, I have to concentrate._

"Jean?"

 _I told you—_

"Jean, there's a plane!"

 _I see it. You control metal, right? Push it out of the way._

"Jean, there are _people_."

 _I'll push_ them _out of the way._

"Are you sure you're okay?"

 _GO._

I hold my hand out and try to sense the metal of the jet we're racing towards. It's so much bigger and heavier than anything I've ever moved — with my powers or otherwise. But if I can't move it, we're going to crash, and possibly die, and Magneto will get the missiles, and our friends might die, and maybe there'll be a war, and —

The plane starts to rattle and shake. It vibrates to the side of the skid strip — not off it entirely, but leaving a path wide enough for us to drive through. It's the best I can do, and I feel so drained. The workers all either run away or are telekinetically thrown onto the grass.

But one has a gun, and as Jean tosses him, he manages to shoot at us. I hear one bullet hit the side of the car door. I hear another puncture our left back tire. We go skidding off the road, and Jean and Bobby and I crash into each other as the car staggers to a stop in the tall grass. I check the rear-view mirror; several of the men are on their feet and running toward us with guns drawn.

I am so tired of people pointing guns at me.

I throw the guns through the air and melt their metal into the side of the jet. The men run in the opposite direction, and I fall back in the seat, panting and nauseous. I put a hand to my aching head and when I pull it away, there's blood on my fingers. When did that happen?

"I think we're close enough to run," Bobby says. "If we really push ourselves."

"We aren't fast enough," Jean says. "We won't get there in time." She throws herself against the steering wheel. "God dammit."

I'm looking out the windshield. There's something in the sky. "Guys?"

"Well, I'm gonna run for it," Bobby says. "Might as well."

"Hey, guys?" I say.

"There's no point in exhausting ourselves before we've even gotten there," Jean says. "Even if we make it in time to stop him, we'll be too tired to do anything."

"LOOK UP!" I shout.

Bobby and Jean raise their heads to the sky. And there he is, great white wings silhouetted against the sun, black and gold costume gleaming. The Avenging Angel soars down to the car, landing smoothly on the hood.

"Am I late?" he asks.

Bobby smiles from ear to ear. "You're just in time, you sonuvabitch."

Jean's eyes start to race. "Okay. Okay. I've got an idea. Warren, grab Bobby and fly him over to the launch complex where Magneto is. I'll grab Lorna and join you."

"But how are you getting there?" Warren asks.

Jean smiles. "I'm flying, too."

And she does, in a sense. Not with Warren's sort of avian grace, but she manages to float herself up into the air, even with me clinging to her back, and we soar over the fields of Cape Kennedy. We must look ridiculous, but I'm sure nobody notices because when I look down, everyone is fighting. Magneto is slowly prying a gigantic I.C.B.M. from its underground silo, and nobody is stopping him. Hank is absorbed in a tussle with Peepers, who's struggling to get past him to attack the professor, who has apparently just knocked Vanisher unconscious the same way Jean did Jason.

Scott's just curled up on the concrete in front of Mesmero, shaking and clutching his head while Mesmero watches and smirks. I don't know what horror he's torturing Scott with, but once Jean sees that, she swoops away from the silo and drops us both down beside Scott. She throws Mesmero to the ground without touching him, without even telekinetically throwing something at him. I don't even know how she does it, how she seemingly managed to weaponize her telepathy. He just falls to the ground like something hit him, and when he tries to get up, he's pushed down again, and when he tries to project an illusion, his head snaps back like he's been shocked, and he groans and moans, and all the while Jean slowly, calmly walks toward him with fire in her eyes.

She stands above his writhing body and looks down, and says, _Sleep._

And he does.

I try to help Scott to his feet, but he pushes me away and stands up on his own, even while he's still trembling. "Lorna, can you stop your father from taking that I.C.B.M.?" he asks. "Just push it down, keep it in its silo?"

"I… I don't know," I tell him.

"You've got to," he says.

Jean rushes over to him and almost knocks him over with a hug. _Are you all right? What did he do to you? What did he make you see?_

"That isn't important right now. Jean, with your telekinesis and Lorna's magnetism power… you two working together could counteract Magneto, right?"

"Why couldn't the professor stop him?" I ask.

Professor Xavier lifts his chin towards Magneto. "It's that helmet of his. There's something about it that blocks my telepathy — and Jean's as well, most likely. I can't get inside his mind."

Jean looks over Scott's shoulder at the professor. _Can you keep both Vanisher and Mesmero unconscious?_

Professor Xavier looks at her with shock and fear in his eyes. _I might be able to. I can try._

"We'll be fine," Scott assures her.

Jean nods, and flies towards the silo. _Come on, Lorna._

I watch her fly away. I see Magneto floating in the air, and Warren swooping around him to distract him, and Bobby hurling chunks of ice and snow at him, and nothing they're doing is making any kind of difference. My feet feel heavy, like they're rooted to the ground, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I think, "Maybe… maybe…" but the thought never leads anywhere. My head is as heavy as my legs. I am so, so tired.

Peepers strains against Hank's arm. "You monster!" he shrieks, spittle flying out of his mouth. "You piece of shit! You don't know what they went through! You got no idea what they did to them at Rikers!"

Hank pulls back a leg to kick him, but he leaves an opening, and Peepers rushes through it. He picks up a brick and hurls it at Professor Xavier. Hank tackles him again, but not before the brick hits the professor's head, opening up a bloody red gash and knocking him and his wheelchair onto the ground.

Scott and I dive to his side. I right his wheelchair while Scott rips off a piece of his shirt and wraps it around the professor's head to staunch the bleeding. I see Professor Xavier look past me, over my shoulder; behind us, Mesmero is starting to awaken.

"Scott," he says, "do you trust me?"

"Yes," Scott says instantly.

"Then take off your glasses."

For a moment, the only movement Scott makes is a slight knitting of his eyebrows above the tops of his glasses. "What?" he breathes.

"There's no other way," Professor Xavier says. "There's no other way to stop Mesmero."

Scott doesn't say anything. He just keeps staring at the professor with his lips flattened. His eyebrows drop back beneath his glasses. "Yes… Professor," he says quietly.

And he rises to his feet, and turns to look at Mesmero, and takes off the glasses.

Now, I've read descriptions of what he did at that orphanage. Everybody who hasn't been living under a rock the last six years has at least heard about it. But I'm still not prepared to see it for myself. You could always see kind of a red glow behind his glasses, but once he removes those it's like staring into the sun. Two blindingly bright red beams shoot out of his eyes and smash into Mesmero, knocking him back onto the ground with a force that nearly buries him in the earth. The beams come in waves, pounding him again and again. In less than a minute, Scott closes his eyes and puts his glasses back on. Mesmero is filthy with blood and dirt. His chest looks like a mountain range. He isn't breathing.

Scott notices me staring. "What are you doing, just standing there? Go! Get out of here! Go stop your father!"

I turn and run as fast as I can, my feet pounding out the same frantic rhythm as my heart. I'm out of breath by the time I reach the edge of the silo. Jean and Magneto float on opposite sides of the missile, one pulling, one pushing. Both look less like people I knew than like gods. But Jean is losing; even as the missile rocks back and forth, shaking itself loose from its scaffolding, it's rising upward. She can only slow it down.

I'm so tired, and if I had any ideas I'm all out of them now, so I just fall to my knees and extend my hands and will the missile to return to its silo. It freezes in place, half in the ground, half out of it. It shudders and drops another few feet when Magneto notices me.

"Daddy," I cry, "please stop. Please… just stop."

"I'm doing this for you, _Sternchen_."

"No. You're doing it for yourself."

"I don't want to hurt you," he says.

"Then don't!" Bobby shouts, lobbing another snowball at his face.

"Don't try to stop me," Magneto counters.

In the stagnant Florida air, I feel a sudden breeze. I feel familiar arms around me and smell a familiar scent, and suddenly I'm being carried and the world is speeding by, the launch complex disappearing in the distance.

"Dammit, Pietro, let me down!"

"You thought you could trap Morty and me in that stupid room forever?" he says. "We're not gonna let you get in the way."

I elbow him in the nose, and it throws him off enough to make him stumble. A shadow falls over us. Warren swoops down and grabs my arm, and I throw my arms around his shoulders. But Pietro isn't willing to let go.

Warren pulls us both off the ground, me trying to hold on and Pietro dangling with his arm around my waist and his legs desperately kicking the air. Warren's flapping his wings like mad, trying to get altitude, and we rise and drop and rise and drop as Warren tries to shake Pietro off and Pietro tries to punch Warren. It's an ugly, clawing free-for-all, and I quickly lose track of whose arms are whose.

Somehow, for a split second, Warren has both his hands on Pietro. Somehow, at the same time, Pietro's arm is no longer around me. In all the rough and tumble, I lose my grip on Warren's shoulders.

As I fall, I grasp at Pietro's pants and Warren lunges for me, but I can't hold on and he can't reach me.

We are very, very high up, and the ground is coming at me very, very fast.


	26. Praying With Eric

**26\. Praying With Eric**

 **Jean**

I feel Lorna fall. I feel the vertigo from inside her brain, feel her fear as though I were the one falling, feel the crunch of her bones as her body hits the hard cement of the launch platform. And then I feel our psychic connection snap, and go dark.

I look across the silo at the man who calls himself Magneto, and I feel his mind as well. I feel his grief and pain, and the way he has wrapped himself in it, using it as a shield to protect himself from the world. It blinds him from everything. He can't see the consequences of what he has done. He doesn't know what just happened to his youngest child. He doesn't know what might be happening to his other daughter, or his son. All he knows is that he is winning. His power is stronger than mine, and Lorna is no longer here to help me. He will wrest the missile from its silo. He's not thinking about how many people have to die — at this air force base or in the nuclear war that will inevitably follow from this battle.

He doesn't think about it, and he doesn't care.

I feel a familiar fire burn behind my eyes, my power swelling up in me. That's what it feels like: not a gift, not a mutation. It feels like _power_. And since the moment it awoke, I have tried to push it down, to control it, to deny it. No more. I can't afford control any longer. I can't let him win.

I let the rage overtake me. I let it wash over and through me like a cleansing fire, like righteous fury, like the judgment of the damned, and I feel my telepathy getting stronger, spreading out across the base. I feel everything. I hear everyone's thoughts, and for once I don't try to block them out and I don't let them overwhelm me. I simply expand myself into and through them until the boundaries between us all no longer exist.

I am Hank, ably fending off Peepers, leaping and diving and kicking with my massive feet. Even now, with the threat of total annihilation hanging over all our heads, I am too delighted with the marvelous things my body can do to worry about what it looks like. I am Bobby, freezing Morty's every attempt at spitting mucus, grateful for the distraction from my own thoughts, safe in the simplicity of cold.

I am the airman praying to God to end this madness, to protect me that I might go home to my family, to forgive me that I might deserve them. I am the missileman straining against the ropes that bind me, wondering if I can wriggle loose and make my way over to the control panel while my Mutant captors are distracted with fighting, wondering if I have the guts to hit that button. I am Professor Xavier straining to psychically keep the Vanisher unconscious but not dead. And I am the Vanisher, trapped inside my own body — again, helpless — again, silently screaming.

I am Lorna floating in blackness, and I am Pietro, equally frantic to help her and guilt-ridden to think that she might be beyond help. I am Warren, and I need Lorna to be okay because my father cannot be right. I am Wanda in Central Control, pouring everything I have into stopping the missilemen from bombing the Mutant Congo in retaliation. I love my family and I love my people, and I fear I'm losing both, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

I am Magneto, an iron shield of rage, and I am Max Eisenhardt, a terrified young man who cannot bear to lose any more of the people he loves. I am a gaping, open wound that spits fire so it will never heal. And I am everyone that fire touches, a thousand minds filled with fear and pain. I am everyone in America and the Mutant Congo that a nuclear war would kill, and everyone who loves them.

Even as I feel engulfed in Magneto's grief, I can still recognize everyone else's. But he can't. He is too wrapped up in his own pain to see the pain he's causing others. I can't take it. It has to end. _He_ has to end. And I'm no longer content to simply stop him. I want him to pay for what he's done, that selfish, narcissistic lunatic. For all the blood on his hands that he can't see, that he won't see, he has to pay.

I can see the magnetic fields he's manipulating, and I grab hold of them. The missile stops shaking. With a heavy thud, it drops back to the bottom of its silo. The walkways wrench back into place around it. With a wave of my arm, I cast Magneto out of the silo, up into the air.

I throw him. I throw him into the air and onto the hard concrete of the launchpad. And I fly up, using my telekinesis as I never have before. I fly up, almost ninety feet to the surface, and float above the battleground. He's waiting for me, with twisted metal ripped from the disused above-ground launch site. He hurls it at me, not to trap me, but to hurt me; I toss it aside. It's such a pitiful attempt, it would almost be funny if it wasn't so infuriating.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said.

 _I don't want to hurt you._

I want him to die.

I shoot psychic shockwaves to the launch pad below. The concrete explodes, crumbled chunks flying up and towards his head. He throws up makeshift metal shields to block me, and I toss each one aside with a flick of my wrist as I close in on him. I will kill him. I will end him. I will see him pay for his crimes.

He stares up at me with Max Eisenhardt's eyes. We ache from the fall. We squint in the glare of the fire above.

I am Scott Summers. I am crouched beside the man I just killed, the man whose name I don't even know. Once I find out, I'll add it to the list in my head that I recite to keep myself awake, to keep myself vigilant. But he does not belong there. They were accidents; this was on purpose. I killed him to stop him. I am everything they always said I was.

I look up at the purple sky and see Jean Grey floating above it all, wreathed in flames, her hair wind-whipped on a still day, her hands hooked into talons as she throws enormous pieces of concrete at Magneto who, for all his age and strength and bizarre metal getup, looks suddenly helpless and small next to this teen-aged girl. She is a burning creature, angelic, demonic, ready to murder a man that a few short months ago comforted her with tea after a nightmare. It scares me to see her like this. That is not the girl I love. That is something else entirely.

My rage drains away. I return to myself. I am Jean again. I sink down to the ground, hear the voices fade, feel the fire subside, and collapse on the broken concrete. I hear Scott shout, "JEAN!" I hear his frantic footsteps getting louder, drumming out a vibration in the rubble. I feel his arms around me, warm and strong and gentle. I am weak, and he loves me.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"I think so," I tell him. "I'm sorry, I… I don't know what came over me. I'm not a killer. I'm not a bad person, I swear to you, that wasn't me…"

I begin to cry, and the earth begins to shake. We look around; Magneto's gone. But with a sinking feeling, I realize I know exactly where he is. And soon I see him rising up out of the silo, arms outstretched like Jesus, and below him, an I.C.B.M., shrouded in gleaming steel. We watch, frozen, as he lifts it up and carries it with his mind to where the Vanisher is, rolling on the grass, reliving his time in jail, but scratching and clawing his way back to consciousness. He opens his eyes. They're wide and wild and determined. I don't know if he could teleport that missile all the way to the Mutant Congo himself, but they've got a bomber jet, and he can get it in there.

We watch the missile rise up and soar through the air, towards the Vanisher. My eyes meet Scott's.

"This is it," he says.

 _I need you to trust me,_ I say. I tell him telepathically because we don't have time for words. _Look at it. Take off your glasses and look at it._

And he does.

Time slows down. I'm exhausted and I'm scared, but I tap back into that power.

I am the LGM-30 Minuteman I.C.B.M. I was born in a California factory, flown to the Florida coast, and buried underground. I cradle three little W56 warheads in my long, sharp nose. My payloads and I have lain in the ground and waited for the time when we would be needed. I was never meant to lie dormant in the earth. They made me to fly. It is my destiny. It is all I have ever wanted, and now I am finally flying, and it is exhilarating. But they also made me to burn, and I don't want to burn. They made me to kill, but I don't want to kill.

I don't have to kill.

I don't have to be the weapon they made me to be.

I feel the blast of Scott's eyes against my metal side; and I am the blast; and I am Jean, directing the blast, concentrating it, guiding it. I am the molecules connecting the payload to the rest of me. I let the beam inside me, let it slice through me, separate the payload from the rest of me, cut off my nose. And it soars down towards Bobby.

And I am Bobby, thinking fast, drawing the water from the humid Florida air and letting it flow through me until it has cooled. It's not easy in this heat; I have pushed myself to the breaking point, and once I'm through, I collapse on the ground, no ice left to cover my skin.

I am the payload, blanketed in snow, my fire gone out, my warhead crowned with a delicate latticework of crystalline ice. I am Lorna, lying in Warren's arms, using the last of my strength to guide the payload to the ground. It falls as gentle as a snowflake.

My vision shrinks back down to only what I can see through Jean Grey's bleeding eyes. Magneto flies into the bomber with the noseless missile. He vanishes — they all do, except Mesmero, who lies dead on the ground.

The last thing I see before I pass out is an angel floating down to me, carrying a girl in his arms.

The last thing I understand before my power fades is that she's going to be all right.

We're all going to be all right.

* * *

I wake up in a hospital bed, the pain in my head dulled. Everything is dull, in fact — the pain, my thoughts, even my vision is a little murky. I feel like my head is stuffed with cotton. I notice an IV snaking out of my arm and absently wonder if it's full of morphine. That would explain it, I guess.

I look around the room. Scott's long, lanky body is sprawled across two hard plastic chairs to the right of my bed, facing each other. His head is thrown back, his chest rising and falling so slowly, he must be asleep. His clothes are rumpled. I wonder how long he's been there. On my left side is another bed. Lorna's in it, swaddled in all kinds of casts and bandages, but alive and sleeping soundly.

I hear the scrape of a metal chair leg across the linoleum floor and a little grunt. I turn back around to see a flicker of red light behind Scott's sunglasses. He blinks at me. "Hi," he says.

"Hi, yourself." My voice sounds and feels like sandpaper in my throat. "How long was I out?"

"Umm…" He checks his watch. "Maybe five hours. We were worried. Your parents are on their way; they're really upset."

I rub my face. "But we did it, didn't we?"

"Yeah. Thanks to you." He palms my cheek, and I sigh and lean into his hand.

"I'm sorry, Scott. I don't know what came over me." I try to look into his eyes, but as always the glasses make it impossible to read him. "I could have killed him. I wanted to. I haven't let loose like that in so long… and to think, that's what came out. That rage, that hate… I never wanted you to see that."

"I'm not afraid of you," he says.

But he is.

There's a knock at the door. "Forgive me for interrupting," Professor Xavier says. "I thought I felt Jean waking up."

"You did," I say.

He wheels himself up to my bedside. "How are you feeling?"

"Alive." I squeeze Scott's hand. "Could you excuse us? I want to talk to the professor alone."

He hesitates, then kisses my forehead and leaves the room.

"He never left your side," the professor says.

I smile and nod. Of course he didn't. "I figured. Professor, I've been thinking, and… I want to take your offer."

He raises his eyebrows. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." I twist my sheet in my hands, looking down so he won't see the tears welling up in my eyes. "I lost control of my power back there, and… and I don't like what it did to me. I don't like what it turned me into. I don't want it, Professor." I meet his gaze, tears streaming down my cheeks. "Take it away. Please. Just take it away."

"You realize I can't do that, Jean," he says gently. "All I can do is suppress your telepathy, put up some blocks in your mind to hold it back temporarily, until you're old enough to control it yourself. Then we can start slowly removing those blocks. But it will always be there, within you."

"Fine, do that. I just… I can't handle it now. I don't want it. I don't care how you do it, just get rid of it. Take it away."

"All right, Jean. If that's what you want."

"It is."

He places a hand at each of my temples and closes my eyes. Involuntarily, I close my eyes as well.

The world grows quiet and small.


	27. Here's That Rainy Day

**27\. Here's That Rainy Day**

 **Charles**

It seemed such a normal place, for what lay within. As in any other workplace, phones rang and secretaries typed and men in suits rushed by. But these were no ordinary office workers. These were G-Men.

To be here, even on invitation, felt vaguely illicit. Somewhere in these offices, hidden away in the Department of Justice building, secrets were collected, indexed, and used to whatever purpose the investigators felt necessary. My secrets, and the secrets of the Mutant movement, were among them.

As always, I felt myself being watched as I wheeled up to the front desk and told the secretary that I had an appointment with J. Edgar Hoover. She recognized me, and nodded, and led me back to his office. Agent Duncan was waiting for me there, along with a young redheaded woman who looked oddly familiar.

Duncan rose from his seat and held out a hand in introduction. "You must be Dr. Xavier. I'm Agent Fred Duncan."

I shook his hand and pretended I didn't already know him, as he had pretended he barely knew me. "And who is this?" I asked, my eyes flickering to the woman.

"Oh, forgive me my rudeness — this is Rachel Smith, one of the girls from the typing pool. She'll be taking notes of our meeting, if you don't mind."

"Charmed," I said, taking Rachel's hand. "I don't mind any note-taking, but I'm surprised you folks want a record of this meeting."

"We record everything here at the FBI," Rachel said with a smile. "We're very meticulous that way."

I suddenly remembered where I had seen her before. "You worked for Senator Kelly, didn't you?"

She swallowed and looked at the floor. "I did, yes."

"My condolences."

"Thank you."

She sat back down and placed a legal pad in her lap. I wheeled my chair between Duncan and Rachel, all of us facing Hoover's desk, and thought back to the only other time I had seen her. She had been so terrified of me that she cautioned her boss not to even shake my hand. She seemed much more at ease now, even though she had every right now to hate Mutants even more than she had before. It must be difficult for her to be in the same room as the former colleague of her old boss' assassin. Of all the girls in the typing pool, why had Hoover chosen her?

Duncan offered me a cigarette and I took it, and we smoked in silence as we waited for Hoover to arrive. I tried to skim the surface of Duncan's thoughts, to read what he knew about the purpose of this meeting, but found unexpected resistance. It was as though something pushed back against my telepathic probes, but the push didn't seem to come from Duncan himself. I directed my attention to Rachel, and felt an even stronger resistance. She flashed me a smile, and I realized the true reason for her presence here a split second before J. Edgar Hoover burst into the room.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but my last meeting ran a little long. Dr. Xavier, it's good to finally meet you." Hoover spoke in a clipped, rapid-fire transatlantic accent. He wasted no time in speaking or breezing past us to sit behind his desk. "I assume you've already met Agent Duncan."

"Yes, we know each other quite well," I said. For a moment, fear flashed across Hoover's broad face. I was glad. I didn't want him to forget whom he was dealing with.

"Yes, well," Hoover said, clearing his throat. "Fred here is the Bureau's expert on the Mutant phenomenon. He probably knows more about Mutants than any ordinary human in the country. That's why I've chosen him to head up our new Mutant Division."

"And what precisely is the purpose of this Mutant Division?" I asked.

"I assure you, it's not what you think," Duncan cut in. "I'm sympathetic to your cause. It's been quite remarkable to see the rise of your kind — a privilege, in fact. I share your conviction that Mutants can live peacefully with non-Mutants and use their... unique gifts... to contribute a great deal to this nation."

"But as we've seen, just because they _can_ live in peace, that's no guarantee that they _will_ ," Hoover said. "Dr. Xavier, you have said that most Mutants don't mean humanity any harm. My question to you is this: who will protect us from the ones who do?" I didn't have to read his mind to detect the terror behind his words. It was the fear of a once-powerful man who knew he no longer mattered.

He tossed a newspaper across the desk at me. On the front page was a photograph of last week's battle at Cape Kennedy. "We've tried again and again to stop this 'Magneto.' Local police forces, the FBI, the CIA, the military… the best G-Men with the best weapons went up against him, and all of them failed." He pointed at the picture of my students. "But not these men. Not X's men."

I looked at the frightened teen-agers in the picture. "They aren't men at all," I said.

"Close enough," Hoover said. "I'm sure you know that Magneto and his followers have hardly made their last move, nor will not be the last Mutants to use their powers against us. If anything, I suspect his example has only encouraged such Mutants.

"Now, I'll be blunt: we have reason to distrust you. Your associations with known subversives and homosexuals give us pause. However, as distasteful as I may find it, I must admit that we are standing on the edge of a strange new world, with new threats that call for new solutions. Your students saved America from rogue Mutants once. They can do so again. And we are prepared to deputize them as honorary agents, qualified to arrest and detain any Mutant who attempts to harm this nation or the people in it — under the guidance of Agent Duncan, of course. If you're willing to take on this job, we're willing to give you whatever resources you require to do it."

"And if I'm not willing?"

He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. "Then we'll shut down your school, as it has already revealed itself to be a hotbed of Mutant subversion. And after all your talk of using Mutant gifts for the good of all, it would look downright suspicious not to lead these Mutants in doing exactly that — as we all know they can. People might start to wonder if you weren't on Magneto's side, if in fact you didn't secretly think that he was right."

I gripped my armrests. "I'm not, and I don't, and I believe you know that, Mr. Hoover."

"I don't know any such thing," Hoover said. "Especially if you choose not to use your tremendous power to help stamp out the dangerous elements in your community. How could we ever trust you to retain such great influence over young Mutants? After all, three traitors came out of your school already; how many more could follow?

"On the other hand, if you were to do your patriotic duty and join the Mutant Division, a grateful nation could contribute quite generously to the school. You'd be providing a public service: guiding young American Mutants in the responsible use of their powers, and making sure they remain loyal to their country. And of course, any students with powers applicable to our mission could be recruited to serve in this division."

"With all due respect," Duncan said, "you've made it your goal to integrate Mutants into regular society and to teach humans not to fear your kind. Well, I think this is perfectly in keeping with that goal. How better to impress the world than by protecting it?"

I tugged at a loose thread in my jacket sleeve. "I don't disagree with the basic idea of it. But these are _children_ , Mr. Hoover, and you would have them sent into war."

"They're hardly children," Hoover said. "Hell, half of them are old enough to go to war already. Who do you think is filling up those ships to Vietnam? Who do you think has fought most every war in history? They're not much younger than you were when _you_ were shipped off to the South Pacific, and can you honestly say that you did nothing of value there? You fought for your country eagerly — heroically. Give them the opportunity to do the same. From what I've seen, it's what they want anyway."

"Even if they did want that, I'm sure their parents wouldn't allow it," I said. "You're forgetting that most of them pulled their children out of my school, and that was _before_ Florida, and _before_ this proposal to turn the school into a sort of Mutant police training facility. The Greys and the Drakes and particularly the Worthingtons would have my head for even suggesting such a thing."

Hoover leaned back, resting his folded hands on his belly. "I'm sure if you were to get them all in a room with you, you could use your considerable persuasive ability to change their minds."

"For all your talk of Mutants using their powers for evil—"

"It's for the greater good, as I'm sure you know," Hoover said.

I sighed. "Well, I'll certainly not manipulate the students into this. I'll propose this to them and if they say no, then that's it."

"Then that's it for your school. You understand that, don't you, Dr. Xavier? That you're putting the future of your institution in the hands of six teen-agers?"

"You propose to put the _world_ in the hands of those six teen-agers," I said. "If they can be trusted with the world, then they can be trusted with a school."

Hoover looked at me with pursed lips and squinted eyes. Finally, he stood and extended a hand. "Very well, then. Talk it over with them, and call my girl when you're ready to speak again."

Rachel led me back to the elevators, and as we got further from Hoover's office, I felt the psychic blocks fall away until only her own mind was closed off from me.

"You're a remarkably powerful telepath, Miss Smith," I told her quietly. "How did you come by such a gift? Your father must have worked for the Manhattan Project."

She froze, then smiled sadly. "No, nothing like that. Both of my parents were Mutants. Telepathy _is_ the stronger of my gifts, though."

"You have a secondary mutation?"

She nodded. "I can manipulate time. Even travel through it, to a limited degree."

"That's remarkable."

"It's less useful than you'd think," she muttered. "And from what people tell me, even my telepathy is nothing compared to my mother's."

"Is she the one who taught you how to inhibit others' telepathy?"

"No, she died when I was very young. It was... an old teacher of mine who taught me that."

"An old teacher? I'd thought Mutants were new, and few in number, and scattered. You make it sound like you grew up in a Mutant community." My mind started to race with excitement. "I can't find such a thing on Cerebro, but if you don't mind, I'd like to see you again and talk about your—"

"They're all dead now," she said flatly.

"Oh. I'm… I'm terribly sorry."

She shrugged, her face grim. "There's nothing I can do about it now."

"If you don't mind my asking," I said, "why would a Mutant as impressive as yourself work for men like Kelly and Hoover?"

She leaned against the wall of the hallway and let out a heavy sigh. "I spent ten years of my life working under the control of men who sought to destroy our kind. All I ever wanted was to undo the damage I'd done, undo it all, and… and now I don't think that's possible. But I'm here now, and all I can do is move forward. I know how to hide in plain sight. I know how to serve people who hate me, and secretly undermine them at the same time."

A group of people stepped out of the elevator, and she fell silent until the last of them walked through the FBI office doors.

"This place is built on secrets, and Mr. Hoover has more secrets than anyone," Rachel continued. "It's why he hired me. He thinks he can control me, just like he thinks he can control you and your students. He doesn't know that the instant he gives us an order we don't like, all his careful plans will come unraveled."

"Because we're so powerful?"

"Because we have wills of our own."

"I'm not sure if you're cautioning me against taking the deal or trying to pull me into some sort of Mutant conspiracy," I said.

She laughed. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I really, honestly don't. I don't know what the right thing to do is at this point, and I swear I'm not trying to pull you into anything. All I'll say is, no matter what you decide to do, you've got a friend in the FBI. We'll both do the best we can and see if we can't stop the world from falling apart."

"That's all any of us can do, I suppose." I rubbed my aching head. "If we're being honest with each other, Miss Smith, I'm starting to suspect that the world will fall apart no matter what we do."

She fell silent for a moment, sucking in her cheeks thoughtfully. "If we're being honest with each other, my real name isn't Smith."

"What is it?"

"Summers."

The elevator dinged behind me.

"It was nice to see you again, Professor," Rachel Summers said, and she turned around and walked back into the office.

* * *

They all came back late in the evening. It was a Friday, and to celebrate their reunion they were all going to meet up in the city to see Stan Getz and his band perform at Café Au Go Go. Their summer semester of training would begin the next Monday, taught by myself along with teachers from the FBI Academy.

I was in my study, looking over the plans for the new, revamped gymnasium. Thanks to a generous grant from the FBI, it would soon be filled with all sorts of automatic mechanical traps and dangers to train the students in combat applications of their powers. I tried not to hear the sounds of FBI agents helping Moira and Amelia to move their things out of their rooms and into Amelia's car. Soon there was a soft knock on the door, and even without telepathy I knew who it was.

"Come in, Moira," I said.

She walked hesitantly into the study, closing the door behind her. "I know I said I'd wait until the kids got back before I left for the airport, so I could say goodbye to them. But I wanted to say goodbye to you now."

I lay my reading glasses down on my desk, wheeled over to her, and took her hand in mine. "Do you want to tell me what a monster I am, too?"

"I'm not Amelia; I won't scold you. I know it wouldn't do any good, anyway. When you've made your mind up, not a soul alive can change it back, least of all me."

"I respect your opinion," I said, "and I'd like to hear it."

Moira looked at me with a tired expression. "Once you've militarized this institution, there's no turning back. It'll never just be a school again. Are you sure this is the path you want to take?"

"I don't have a choice."

"There's always a choice."

"Then you could choose to stay."

She took a deep breath. "I can't do my research in this country, not the way things are now. I don't trust this government not to use my work to hurt Mutants. And with you working for the FBI, and David… I can't be here, Charles. I'm taking that chair at Edinburgh, where I might do some good."

I kissed her hand.

"Don't do this, Charles."

"Why does it feel like we're always saying goodbye?" I asked her fingers.

"I told you back at Oxford: if you wanted a housewife, you'd have to look elsewhere. But if you wanted me, you'd have to accept that my first love will always be science. You never accepted that. What else is there for us to say but goodbye?"

I let go of her hand. "You're all packed, then?"

"Yes, all the bags I can take with me. I'll send for the rest, my lab equipment and so forth, as soon as I'm settled."

"Take your time. I'll keep everything here for you." I gulped. "Do you… would you like to take his urn?"

She pressed her eyes shut against the tears. "You can keep it. He was your son, too."

"Yes, but —"

"I don't want to look at it. Please."

"All right." Neither of us spoke for a moment. "I know I have no right to ask this of you, but do you have room for one last package?"

"Depends on the size."

The portrait of Anja was lying against the wall, wrapped in brown paper and string and addressed to Max Eisenhardt in Léopoldville, Mutant Congo. I pointed at it.

"He'll want this," I said. "But with the embargo, I can't—"

"I'll get it to him," she said.

"Thank you."

Moira knelt down and hugged me. We held each other for a very long time, but eventually she had to break away and leave me to my work.

* * *

It was almost midnight when I felt them driving back. I sent my mind flying over the hills of Westchester County, into a car packed with giddy teen-agers. Hank was driving with one hand on the wheel, the other carefully held open so as not to smudge the ink on its palm. It read, "Vera LOR-8372." He smiled to himself, his mind swimming with thoughts of the witty librarian who had called him a hero.

Beside him sat Bobby and Lorna, planning excitedly to see the World's Fair. The part of Lorna's hair was lined with her natural green, her crutches balanced between her legs and her casts signed and illustrated so extensively that almost no white remained on them. She and Bobby bantered with the ease of lifelong friends, jokes and laughs ricocheting off each other. Bobby twisted around to face the backseat where Warren, Jean, and Scott sat.

"Whaddaya say, guys?" Bobby asked. "World's Fair next weekend?"

Scott held a finger to his lips. "Shhh," he whispered, nodding to Jean, who was asleep with her head on his shoulder. He gazed down at her with a smile. I was glad to see him smile; it happened so rarely, but more and more often lately. If anything good had come of the past year, at least those two had found some comfort and happiness in each other.

"I know I'm in," Warren said.

"Slim? You in?" Bobby asked.

Scott silently nodded in agreement.

"All right, it's a date!" Bobby said, spinning back around.

"Yaybo!" Lorna shouted.

Scott shushed again, more loudly.

"You know, I've been meaning to ask," Hank said. "Where does 'yaybo' come from? I never heard the term until I came here."

"Oh, I heard it from Warren," Lorna said.

"Well, _I_ heard it from Bobby," Warren said. "I assumed it was a New York saying."

Lorna wrinkled her brow. "I've lived my whole life in New York and it's new to me."

"Look, does it really matter where it came from?" Bobby said, suddenly flustered. "The important thing is, it's a great word, and useful in all kinds of situations."

"Is it from Long Island?" Warren asked.

"Well… I… you know…" Bobby stammered.

A rare grin spread across Scott's face. "Bobby, do you… do you just make up words?"

Bobby's cheeks began to glitter with frost. "Well, so what if I do? Slang doesn't just come out of nowhere! Somebody had to invent 'cool' and 'hip' and 'far-out.' Why not me?"

"I don't think that's how language works," Lorna said.

"Hey, you were all saying it until you found out it came from me!"

The car erupted in laughter. Jean blearily lifted her head from Scott's shoulder.

"What's so funny?" she asked, squinting at her friends.

"We just found out that Bobby made 'yaybo' up and now he's embarrassed," Lorna explained.

"You guys didn't know that?" Jean mumbled, lay her head back on Scott's shoulder, and went back to sleep.

I watched them pull up to the house and pile out of the car, giggling and singing. Lorna performed an imitation of Astrud Gilberto, and Bobby danced to it until Lorna was laughing so hard she couldn't sing any more. Hank gazed at the number on his palm and Jean gazed at Scott and Warren burst out of his harness the instant he burst out of the car, his wings spread wide.

Tomorrow they'd be soldiers, but tonight they were young, and full of life and love, and the horrors of the world could not reach them. It was an illusion, of course. Those horrors were closer than they thought, and the world could not afford their happiness. That's what I told myself, and I half believed it. But I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach. Amelia had told me she couldn't be a party to this. She had called me a monster, and I half believed that. I had no right to rip their innocence from them, to throw them into more battles like the one at Cape Kennedy. But who was she — who was I — to deprive the world of the only people who could protect them? No, this was the right path. This was the only path. And all we could do was move forward.

Moira and Amelia wanted to say goodbye. Agent Duncan and his men wanted to say hello. And I wanted to say a few words to mark this transition, to welcome them, to congratulate, to apologize. I granted them a few more moments of childhood. And then I closed my eyes, and I reached out with my mind and called to them:

 _To me, my X-Men._


End file.
